


The King's Curse

by jsnoopy



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Blood and Violence, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Minor Character Death, Past Abuse, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:00:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 41,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25318714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jsnoopy/pseuds/jsnoopy
Summary: Killers weren’t born. Killers were made.In order to survive, Jeno would have to learn how to be the one who made the final blow.
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Lee Jeno
Comments: 105
Kudos: 104





	1. Chapter 1

The invitation arrived in the rain. His father’s face was as gray as the sky. Jeno eyed the way the thick envelope shook between his father’s fingers. When he took it, the old man jerked his hand away as if burned.

There was no flame to lick at Jeno’s palm, but the wax sealing the envelope was red, instantly recognizable. He rubbed his thumb over the seal, feeling every ridge and dip of the imprint. The Twins -- identical figures standing side by side -- were small under the pad of his finger. Although this envelope had traveled far, the wax felt warm, like the seal had just been pressed outside his door.

Jeno felt his father’s eyes on his face and turned his back to him. He was accustomed to the stare. It didn’t unnerve him anymore. He slid his finger under the edge of the envelope and peeled it back. The paper was expensive – were it not for his callused hands, it might have cut his skin. But his palms had grown rough with farm work, scraped raw and healed over for years. He opened the envelope carefully, the perfect scrawl of his name on the front stealing his breath.

Mortecole, the academy in Avimlore, only sent these letters out to people who deserved them. Every child had heard those words whispered in their ears after misbehaving: _The Wolf will come and snatch you from your bed. Mortecole will send for you._

Perhaps the words were a threat to some little boys. To Jeno, who rolled them around his mouth like sticky candy, they were a promise.

He scanned the letter without really reading it – there was time for him to memorize it later, clutching the paper to his chest as if it were the only thing that might keep his heart beating.

The invitation was polite, but it was not a question. It was an order.

It was an escape.

As night fell, his father bolted the door and shut himself in his room. Jeno heard the drag of heavy furniture and felt a twinge of something like a smile. Things had shifted in his favor, for once.

The bolt on the door was to keep the things that lurked at night out, but the blockade of the sole bedroom in their modest house was to keep Jeno, specifically out. It did not trouble him. If he was trapped out, his father was also trapped in, and he’d wake at the sound of the furniture moving again before his father could surprise him in his sleep. But he knew he would not have to feel the old man’s hands on him again, now that he had been marked by The Wolf.

It was a summons that was perfectly timed to reach him, so that he would leave on the first ship out in the morning. But that meant tonight was his last chance to walk the island where he had been born and raised, the last time he could see his mother.

When his father’s snore thundered through the walls, Jeno slipped out of bed. He lifted the bolt easily and stepped outside, barefoot. The breeze was warm and wet, lifted to the farm from the beach. They were very lucky to be able to farm here at all, some said, though it was well known that their ‘luck’ was attributed to his mother’s devoted worship.

His mother’s gods were fickle. Jeno could not understand them. She prayed, gifted her son to the temple, and they gave his father good crops. His father stole him from the priests and beat him with proper praying hands, and Jeno endured it. For all her prayers, she was the one who died, and Jeno was the one who was forced to live with all her blessings. How that was justice, he could not wrap his head around.

Fortunately, there was a different justice that would soon belong to him. He slipped his hand under his shirt, feeling the edges of the envelope where he’d tucked it away. It was warm from his body heat. He kept his fingers on it the whole walk to the beach, just to assure himself that it was there.

There were no graves on the island, unless you were wealthy. For everyone else, there was just the ocean. He faced it and strained his eyes, trying to see the shape of the Yeolijn coast, where Mortecole’s towers loomed high on the cliff face.

Jeno would not take anything more than the clothes on his back to Avimlore, so there was nothing to prepare. He sat on the sand all night, rubbing the wax seal smooth.

✵✵✵✵✵✵✵

It had only been a year since the crowning of the Yeolijn King, and the city showed it. The Crown Prince had been molded to his position since birth, but the illness that befell the royal household was unpredicted. Not five years after the war with Aurelos, death was not expected to rear its head on the providence of the King.

His and Her Royal Highness, dead.

The Crown Prince, dead.

The second son vanished with half of the royal treasury. It may have served him better than a crown. Rumors of treason had lain in wait for him if he ascended the throne so quick, so unexpected, under such suspicious circumstances.

So, strangely, it was a cousin, young and green, that found his way on the illustrious throne of Yeolijn, backed by the Regent and the Royal Council. This solution satisfied the nobles, who had new freedoms of their own while the country was sorted out, but the people were not so convinced.

This resolution had taken a twisting path -- lands were divided, trade paths saw new threats. Only the coast was guarded by the national army. Naturally, the coastal city Avimlore found itself busy and crowded, while the countryside fell into the hands of warlords and thieves.

Jeno arrived in Avimlore by ship, one that started in the islands and brought raw resources to the coast of the mainland. The journey had left him exhausted, unable to keep food down.

He had found himself under the kind care of a sailor, who tipped a flask toward him with a simple request. _Drink to keep you settled, in exchange for some mercy if The Wolf finds the name Moon in his ledger._

Jeno didn’t know what the drink was, but it slid down his throat easier than food and warmed his whole body. It worked fast. For a few moments, he was struck with the sense that he might have been drugged, but at least cotton-headed inebriation was better than seasickness.

He would remember the name Moon. It would be hard to forget.

Through the journey, the skies were dark, the waves rough. They slapped the hull of the ship like it was a nuisance, the spirits of the ocean happy to drag it under.

The sight of Avimlore’s rocky coast was a welcome sight, not just for land, but the sunshine that hung over it. It was the beginning of summer, and the air was heavy with humidity. But Jeno was trading one dampness for another, and he was glad to take the warmth of a cloudless sky over the clammy hold.

At port, he met a group of others, but there was no time for an introduction. They were rushed onto the waiting carriages.

Mortecole loomed over the sprawling city of Avimlore, its black walls and iron gate the only thing barrier between the esteemed students and the common street rat. There were no guards posted in the towers. There was no need for them.

Mortecole was where Justice was born. Who would cross Justice’s path willingly, when it had so many teeth?

The country may have been in quiet chaos, but Mortecole was a constant, separate from the unsteady royal demands by its fealty to Justice alone.

Jeno stepped down from the carriage that had escorted him through the gates. Standing in the shadow of the great towers, he couldn’t see the cliff face on its opposite side. He couldn’t hear the tumultuous waves hundreds of feet below, not over the sounds of the neighborhood, but he knew they were there. Enclosed by these black walls, it was steadying to know that life continued outside them.

On the other side of the open gates, a woman hung out the door of her shop. She waved a towel in the air, catching the attention of passing crowds. “You look like you could use some food!” She called, tempting them into the shop with the promise of a hot bowl of broth and hand-pulled noodles.

A few people hesitated, tittering to each other over how they might spend the coins weighing down their pockets. A small girl stopped her father, tugging on his hand to get his attention.

Jeno watched them while he waited for the carriage to empty. Could that be him, in another life? Could he have been a boy running after his father, begging for a treat on the way home? Maybe a reward for his good marks.

The woman in the door turned her face and caught his eye. Her smile faded, her cheeks pale. He supposed she saw something in his dark eyes that betrayed him as an acolyte of The Wolf. For a moment, he wasn’t watching a stranger, but looking up at his mother.

Her cool hands would’ve cupped his face between them, her lips pursed as she surveyed her child. “My little boy,” she would’ve said, “has such sad eyes.”

“Devil eyes,” his father would remind him, long after she was gone. Devil eyes for a devil boy.

Jeno blinked and the memory cleared. He wished he could have left his memories at the gate like he was leaving everything else. His past was just luggage he hadn’t meant to pack.

The shopkeeper turned away. After all, maybe she saw nothing special in him. Maybe he was just another boy walking into Mortecole, who wouldn’t walk out again.

Jeno rocked to the side as someone pushed past him.

He caught himself before he stumbled, whipping his head to spot whoever had shoved him out of the way. He saw a head of thick black hair and a wide white smile, but the boy slipped into the forming line before he caught any defining features.

Metal chains groaned as the gate lowered. Jeno glanced to the street once more. He could not leave his memories behind him, but maybe he could trap them out. He imagined them a ball in his hand, and saw himself tossing the mass through the rapidly closing space. It slipped under the gate just in time. He took a breath and turned back to the line.

He stepped into place behind a girl with long red hair, rolled his shoulders, and did not look back.

A woman dressed in black had picked them up from the city center. She hadn’t said a word other than the few directions she’d given them. _In. Out. Line up._

Now, she walked down the line, her hands folded behind her back as she studied them. At the end of the line, Jeno straightened his posture and held his breath. He kept his gaze focused ahead as she stopped in front of him. Her expression was shuttered, betraying no opinion, good or bad. This close, Jeno could see the details of her face, her smooth skin, the faded pink scars across her brow, the burn – long healed – that fanned down her throat and disappeared under the black collar of her coat.

Her coat, which swooshed around her legs as she walked, was pinned at the base of her throat. The pin was small, understated, but the Twins stood out – embossed metal, dark to match the iron gates.

He would not ever be able to say for sure what she saw, looking at him, or if it was anything like what made the shopkeeper pale, but she turned on her heel and walked back to the front, her long black braid swinging behind her.

Jeno exhaled slowly.

“Follow me,” she said, “watch where you’re going, this is the only tour you’ll get.”

Across from the inner courtyard stood a black stone building. On approach the walls seemed to grow taller, until Jeno had to crane his neck back to see the sky. Its height was a few meters lower than the outer walls, but they seemed equally enormous. That, or Jeno felt abnormally small.

Jeno followed the troop into the building. From the outside, he had seen no windows, and expected something like a dank dungeon past the iron doors.

Instead, the entrance was bright, intricate metalwork sconces illuminating the room from high on the walls. Deep blue tapestries hung in the spaces between them, the color of the sky after midnight.

Jeno glanced around, his curiosity winning over the desire to appear cool and impassive. A look over his shoulder spiked his heart rate, as he noticed for the first time the woman in step behind him. He had not heard her footfalls. For a moment, he thought that their leader was supernaturally quick – how she had crossed from the front of the line to behind him, he had no idea. But then he realized this woman’s eyes were set a little farther apart, her brow heavier, she did not carry the same scars. They were not the same, though they walked the same, dressed the same, had the same blank face.

She didn’t bother meeting his surprise, kept her gaze ahead.

Jeno swallowed dryly and focused on following the red-headed girl before him. If he could match his stride to the others’, maybe everything else would fall in line, and he would find a place here with a shadow of his own.

The line was led to the baths. The door looked just like any other, but the inside of the room was hazy with steam. Within seconds, the heat clung to Jeno’s skin and made him itch with the desire to take off his warm cloak. He was in luck.

“Bathe,” one of the women directed. The baths were too clouded to tell which one it was, but one would speak for both regardless of the owner of the voice. It was the way of Twins.

Jeno was reluctant to strip in front of all these people. He fingered the knot tying his shirt closed at his chest, and debated his options. It was unlikely that there was more than one choice. He pulled his clothes off, and followed the lead of his peers, who dropped their clothes in a heap on the ground.

The baths weren’t separated by gender. By the nature of their invitation, who they were, few of the people around Jeno were likely to care about things like modesty, but he was careful to avert his eyes. The water was hot, almost intolerably so. He kept his lips pressed together as he cleaned himself, wary to show any sign of discomfort.

Aside from the shamelessness of bathing with twenty or so strangers, Jeno was grateful for the steam that clouded the room. It meant he could hardly see the details of those around him, even if he wanted to, which meant they could not see him either. Somehow, even this exposed, the mottled bruises that littered his torso and the scars that lined his back and shoulders remained his. His vulnerabilities, so far, belonged to him alone.

He wondered how long that would last. The thought made every breath sharp, his chest tight. But weakness would not become him here.

 _Devil eyes,_ he heard, echoing around the space he’d carved from his memories, _devil boy._

Clearly he had not done a good job discarding the past. But the whisper in his ear might serve as a reminder of why he had come to Mortecole.

They were given simple clothes with complicated details – long sleeved cotton the same shade of blue as the tapestries in the entrance hall, the laces tied at the collar and the wrist. The shirts narrowed at the waist, meant to tuck into the equally form fitting black trousers, ending at the shiny black boots.

Jeno managed well enough stepping into his pants, but was stymied by the laces running down his forearms. A quick glance around told him only a few others shared his struggle. Most of his peers had dressed and stepped into line again. The line had changed order, from the quickest to the slowest, and Jeno had to hope that this was not a ranking that would affect anything important.

He gave up on straining his wrists to pull the laces tight, and used his teeth. He was far from first, stepping back into line, but he wasn’t last either.

He was glad that his hair was so short, cut close to his head, because he knew it would dry fast. A few of the people stepping into line had longer hair that dripped wet spots onto their clothes – at least the material was dark enough to hide them. One of them was the boy who’d pushed Jeno aside. He stood a few strangers ahead of Jeno now, his shaggy black hair slicked back from his forehead with water. A few strands had dried, falling over his temples.

As if he could sense Jeno watching, the boy turned and looked at him. His grin was fast, pushing his cheeks into two round hills. He stuck his tongue out at Jeno between his teeth, but the smile vanished as quick as it’d come. Jeno blinked fast. The boy faced forward.

In this new place, maybe that was a show of extended friendship. Jeno doubted it. There would be few friends made in Mortecole. And he hadn’t had any before – people were of as much use to Jeno as what they offered him. Relationships of any kind were useful for few things, so their absence was unfelt. The only person who would matter to him would be his Twin, whoever they were.

He would have to keep an eye on that one. He would have to keep an eye on all of them. For that, Jeno was lacking in eyes.

They left the baths. Jeno flicked his gaze around as they walked, but without windows there was no way to tell how long it had been since they had entered the first building. Somehow, it felt like both seconds and days had passed. But when they continued through the building, stepping into the inner courtyard, the sun had not moved from its place in the sky, and hardly any time had gone by.

This courtyard was much larger than the last, spread over cobblestone and dirt. To the right stretched a wide sparring arena, to the left a series of targets had been set up. While the first courtyard had been empty save for themselves and the carriages, this one was busy.

Life would not wait for them to be settled. All around them were men and women wearing blue and black. The flash of a knife, reflecting the sun as it arced through the air, distracted Jeno from his obedient steps.

A few meters away, two students sparred in the dusty arena. Both dressed in the same midnight blue as Jeno now wore, though their hair was shaved close to their scalps, even shorter than his.

One held a knife in each hand, the other was unarmed. It didn’t seem like a fair fight, but the defender gripped the knife-wielder by the wrists as he swung and slid between his legs, knocking him off balance.

With a slanted smile, sharper than the knife’s edge, the attacker rolled. The knives disappeared from his hands – they must have been sheathed so they wouldn’t end up sticking the wrong body.

The boy who’d slid across the dirt rose to his feet again. He raised himself like he’d hardly been touched, brushing the dust from his palms in one unhurried gesture. He pursed his lips as he studied his opponent, drawing an exaggerated pout across his face – his lips were plump enough already. He bent his knees as he braced himself for his opponent. But the childish expression disappeared as his opponent called out to him.

The knives were out again by the time their eyes latched onto him. Jeno felt his ears burn at being caught. But it was impossible not to stare at their lithe limbs, the easy way they bested each other and greedily gulped air – the only tell of their physical exertion.

The unarmed boy held Jeno’s gaze the longest. Jeno was struck breathless by his golden eyes. He squinted against the sun warming Jeno’s back. As a knife slid for his throat, the boy ducked away, but he was too late. The tip of the knife had nicked the underside of his jaw.

He tensed, pressing his fingers to his neck to check the depth of the wound, and swatted at his attacker.

Rather than sidestep the weak hit, the other boy smiled, twirling the knife around a few times before he wiped the blade on his thigh. He cut Jeno a look, his smile fixed in that same sharp slant.

Jeno turned away. This would be the only time, he knew, that he would be able to turn his back on either boy and survive, so he would relish the opportunity while he held it.

“Your first trial,” the women instructed them, standing in the dazed heat of the inner courtyard, “is to deal a blow.”

The fresh line of students would not dare to chatter at each other like schoolchildren at this revelation. They stood still, waiting to see who might be the first to move.

“Choose a partner and a weapon.”

With such vague direction, the line broke. Jeno swept his attention over the small crowd, his mind working fast to analyze their weaknesses. It would serve him well to choose a sparring partner who would allow him show off his own strengths, without being bested or looking like a bully.

He was too slow -- someone found him first. The firm grip around his wrist startled him. The hand was hot even through the cotton of his sleeve and all its confounded lacing.

The hand was attached to the boy who had pushed him, the boy with a silly grin like a theater mask.

Standing beside him now, the boy was of similar height, his hair the same pitch black as Jeno’s. They were a poor imitation of Twins, but it was the first moment Jeno truly realized the magnitude of this day. The stranger knocked his shoulder against Jeno’s and smiled at his refusal to shift to the side, even a little.

“Hi partner,” he said, “I’m Chenle.”

✵✵✵✵✵✵✵

Chenle held himself in a nearly comical way. Even standing, he looked too relaxed, like a man lounging under a servant’s doting care.

It didn’t stop Jeno’s nerves.

Chenle had chosen Jeno and chosen the swords, pointing them out before Jeno had the chance to find his tongue. Jeno, at least, was able to choose _which_ sword, testing the weight from hand to hand as if he had any knowledge of the weapon.

All the weapons at Mortecole were simply made, clean lines and sharpened blades. Jeno’s mouth went dry as he practiced a slow swing through the air. He felt silly, his grip too tight on the hilt. His wrists were already sore from his awkward hold on it.

Jeno glanced uneasily at the crowd watching them, eying the Twins who had guided them this far and who now crossed their arms behind their backs, waiting to see the outcome of this duel.

He’d been tricked, he thought, watching Chenle tip his neck from side to side, stretch his arms, and yawn. The sword fit in Chenle’s hand like he’d been raised to hold one, his fingers curled over the hilt like growing ivy -- twisting, creeping, belonging.

“Are you lordling?” Jeno asked as he hefted his own weapon higher. He grimaced at the strain in his farmer’s muscles.

“Offended that I know how to hold a sword?” Chenle asked, laughing.

Jeno wanted to be riled by his amusement. It would be easier to fight him if he felt any animosity, but it was a funny laugh and it cut through Jeno’s nerves. He had to bite the inside of his lips to keep from joining him.

“Try not to kill me, please,” Jeno said.

Chenle laughed, said, “I’ll try,” and swung.

Jeno had limited time to analyze the power behind Chenle’s swing. Instead of standing his ground and trying to parry his move, Jeno stumbled back. Chenle’s amused gaze remained as he drove him back.

Without looking at their audience, which would have been a poor choice as Chenle’s sword hacked through the air in the place Jeno had been only seconds before, Jeno knew he was not leaving a good impression. The Wolf did not select students who ran away. Jeno had had enough of being hurt, but at least here in the sparring ring, he had the chance to win.

Jeno put a quick distance between them, but Chenle advanced with a glimmer in his eyes. Behind Jeno, there were more partners sparring. In the corner of his eyes, he caught golden eyes watching. This time, when Chenle raised his sword, Jeno met him. A painful tremor shocked up his arms at the force of Chenle’s blow. Their blades clanged, the scrape of them together rang in Jeno’s ears, made him clench his jaw. With gritted teeth, he leveraged Chenle backward, and made a swing of his own.

“Now we’re getting somewhere!” Chenle cheered as they circled each other, but when they met each other again Jeno saw the strain in the line of his mouth, the sweat beading at his hairline. Locks of hair fell in his eyes with his constant motion, and he had to shake it away without losing his sight on Jeno or he would be in for a surprise.

Jeno wasn’t winning, but he wasn’t the only party making a true effort now. Chenle’s exertion filled him with a glimmer of hope. He used it to spark his next move, bracing himself for an impact as he swung his sword up toward Chenle’s side. Chenle blocked him again, skirting to the side.

If Jeno could force him back, like Chenle had done to him, maybe he could wear him down enough to have a chance. He stepped forward, Chenle stepped back. Jeno paused as Chenle slipped a hand under his sleeve, the laces tied much looser than Jeno’s around his wrist, and brought out a small vial.

“What--” Jeno started to ask. He didn’t get the chance to finish.

The stopper was off in a moment, pried open between Chenle’s teeth, and then the contents were out, spilled over the blade. If Jeno had used the seconds between Chenle’s actions to his benefit, he might have been able to get inside his guard and deliver a hit or two, sword or not. Instead he stood there, stunned, like a child at a carnival, and watched the boy angle the width of the blade, dripping, toward the hot Avimlore sun. The burst of flame licking over the blade from hilt to point did not waver Chenle’s confidence. He held tight to the sword even as the fire reached for him, eating away at the whatever combustible fuel he’d doused the metal with.

Logically, Jeno knew he should be afraid. But when he reached inside himself, all he found was the faces of the attendants at his mother’s temple, their faces split between light and shadow over the bronze braziers. A sacrifice was to be made here, in fire, and it looked as if Jeno was the poor lamb.

He had always hated fire, especially hot metal, the way it burned red and left marks on everything it touched. If dealing a single blow was the test, the trial was the flame.

Jeno swung again, his shoulders screaming. Chenle’s face was as impartial as the bronze gods in the temples, a mask of tolerance. Maybe Jeno’s moves were too erratic now under his exhaustion, maybe Chenle’s new trick had been an insurance for his own energy, and now he felt renewed in its heat.

As their swords clanged together, and they circled again, Jeno saw gold, brighter than the flame, heavier than the gods. He stared back, his concentration broken despite the threat to his life just steps away, and watched the flicker of interest in the other boy’s gaze as he eyed Jeno’s fight. His chin tipped up, his fingers still pressed to the scratch under his jaw. It would heal. Would Jeno?

He tumbled to the ground as Chenle swept his legs out from under him, taking advantage of his drifting attention. In the fall, Jeno’s sword was knocked to the side.

“Is this too boring?” Chenle drawled, walking calmly after him as Jeno scrabbled for his weapon again. He dug the tip of his sword into the dirt, dragging it along his side, leaving a thin line in his wake. “You’d prefer to look at prettier things?”

Jeno smelled smoke, realized his left sleeve was singed. He was reaching for his sword when Chenle toed his shoulder, the hard shell of his boot digging into Jeno’s flesh as he pressed him face down into the dirt.

The fire hadn’t lasted long -- the flame had eaten up all the strange liquid -- but the heat remained, fierce against the back of Jeno’s neck as Chenle pointed his sword down at him.

There was dirt in his mouth. He spit it out, but his tongue was still dry and heavy. “Maybe you should make more of an effort,” he said, “so my eyes don’t stray again.”

Chenle laughed. With his cheek pressed to the ground, Jeno didn’t have a very good view of the Twins watching them, but he saw the curt nod, and then Chenle was letting him stand again.

“A pretty trick,” one of their tour guides said, “but you won’t always have something up your sleeve.”

It was a win, for Chenle, regardless.

Jeno ignored the hand Chenle offered him, standing on his own. All his muscles ached. Frustration at his own inexperience rose heavy in his throat, but it wasn’t the time for an emotional fit. He fixed his expression into something close to acquiescence.

Chenle punched his shoulder, hard, but not ill-intentioned. “Friends?”

Jeno eyed him as they stepped back into the line. He had lost, yet Chenle accepted his weaknesses without dismissing him as useless. “Why?”

Something flashed through Chenle’s eyes that Jeno couldn’t interpret. He shrugged one shoulder and then slung his arm around Jeno’s neck, either oblivious to the grimace Jeno awarded him or apathetic to it. “I’ve bested you publicly. Better to keep you close then set you loose thinking you can get revenge.”

Faultless logic. Jeno ran his tongue over his teeth, making sure they were all still firmly intact, and did not answer him. He didn’t punch him either, which would have been an answer of its own. The silence suited them both.

Jeno would have to start thinking like Chenle in order to survive and be successful. It would help him, too, to keep him close.

Killers weren’t born. Killers were made.

In order to survive, Jeno swallowed the fact that he would have to learn how to be the one who made the final blow. It burned hot as the sun in his chest, long after the moon took its rightful place in the sky.

✵✵✵✵✵✵✵

They were allowed to keep their names, if only to reduce the lengthy list of habits they would have to learn to survive. But in true showing of The Wolf’s kindness, those who wished to truly leave their lives behind them were granted the opportunity to name themselves new. Only a handful of students in Jeno’s cohort submitted a new name and just hours after training had begun on their first day, he could not have recalled what they had previously been called even if someone held a knife to his throat.

There was a thin Aurelian boy, called Jaemin, with cheeks as pink as blossoms even in repose, who’d scoffed at the Twin who asked if he would be keeping, or changing his name. Jeno wasn’t certain what was funny, but Jaemin’s humor was smooth and easy to accept, strange as it was. He would not let anyone forget that he had been raised in the courts.

“In Aurelos, we would never bathe all in one room like this,” Jaemin told Jeno as they disrobed in the -- much larger yet less grand -- dormitory baths at the end of their training day in the first or second week. “Everyone in the court would have their own servant to attend them, and everyone uses sweet oils so they don’t smell like the stables.”

“Too bad you were thrown out of the courts, your Highness,” someone called from across the room.

Everyone knew Jaemin had no royal blood. Royalty didn’t train at Mortecole. They joined the army, became commanders, attained chips and traded goods in distant places. He was too sweet and pretty to end up at the Academy if he could have served elsewhere, even in waiting for a higher ranking Aurelian nobleman.

Still, the jab made Jaemin flush, turning his bright-eyed gaze to the rippling water he stood waist deep. More verbal lashings followed in the days to come. Jaemin took them with quiet nature, turning his cheek.

He was an easy target. He bruised like fruit from the island Jeno was born, his flesh tender and relenting. But that made it all the easier to see how he was singled out when the harassment shifted away from gentle teasing.

The teachers did nothing. Jeno would not have expected them to. Jaemin grew quieter with time, but kept the same steady gaze, his chin tilted high.

One night, Jeno startled awake at the sound of a body hitting the floor. He sat straight up in his cot. When his eyes adjusted, he saw Jaemin standing over someone curled into the fetal position. It was clear even from a few seconds of observation that someone had tried to surprise Jaemin in the middle of the night and were surprised themselves to find that Jaemin could defend himself.

Jaemin lifted a foot and poked their shoulder with his toes, rolling them onto their back. They groaned. Jaemin pressed the heel of his foot to their throat and delivered a few hushed words in Aurelian. The language was mild. On Jaemin’s tongue it bit. Jeno watched Jaemin slide back into bed, but he was not sure if either of them slept much that night.

After that he was left alone. Along with his assailants, his smile disappeared.

Jeno took to hurrying to meals. He tried to sit as close to the former courtier as he could. It was a lesson in patience, shifting a few seats down one of the long tables in the crowded dining hall, convincing others to exchange spots with him. But he succeeded. He claimed a seat beside the picky Aurelian, and observed the way he picked apart his food, chewing slowly.

“Your language is interesting,” Jeno told him one evening, “I’ll give you my bread if you teach me some words.”

Caught off guard, Jaemin’s smile touched his lips briefly. Iit set a bird to flight in Jeno’s chest. “Dear Jeno, I’m a lover, not a bargainer.”

Jeno considered this for only a few seconds before passing his portion of bread for the night from his plate to Jaemin’s. “In Yeol, they’re the same.”

 _Bread,_ Jaemin taught him, whispering with childish glee, _food, water, pig, bitch, whore, cunt._

✵✵✵✵✵✵✵

Jeno relished in being unknown. He was not distinct looking like Jaemin, whose sun-lightened brown hair was always soft, even after a grueling day of training. He did not have charisma like Chenle or a skill like the boy with the knives, who he watched spar when he could, shooting greedy glances at the nimble twist of his fingers across the arena between dodging Chenle’s lazy punches. These traits would serve them well as shadows, and would create balance for their Twin, when The Wolf partnered them.

While Jeno was pleased with Chenle and Jaemin’s company, it was walking through the halls, alone, without disturbance, that lightened his shoulders, silenced his steps, and gave him the illusion of being able to fly. He was Jeno, from the islands. He was fourth in hand to hand combat, and a growing force with a sword. That was all. That was all he needed to be.

On the first of every month, the carriages brought new students to Mortecole. Jeno faced Chenle in the inner courtyard, flexing his fingers. His knuckles were cracked and sore from fighting, but after wrapping his hands with crisp white bandages the only reminder of his work was the pain. He spread his fingers wide to feel the stretch of his scabs.

When the new cohort passed into the inner courtyard, Jeno and Chenle mutually decided to take a break, if only to eye the newcomers. It was what the others had done when Jeno’s cohort arrived, and he had participated in the same observation twice now. It was important to see what was coming at you, before it was armed with a dagger or a spear.

He’d never seen anyone else from the islands. Being the only one had relaxed him. He’d taken it for granted, he realized, as he watched Peter trail into the inner courtyard dressed in the severe student blue. In Jeno’s mind’s eye, Peter wasn’t more than eight, splashing seawater on him as they ran down the beach, and twelve, watching Jeno break Alexander’s nose over a petty argument, fifteen, stealing his father’s coin purse to bribe their way onto a ship bound for Aurelos, and avoiding Jeno’s eyes when his father dragged him back home by the neck.

Jeno bit his tongue so hard he feared it might split, but still the ground seemed to sway under his feet. Peter didn’t notice him at first, then he did, and Jeno knew that his anonymity was a bird with wings, flying over the high walls, and that it would not return.

✵✵✵✵✵✵✵

“I heard something interesting today,” Jaemin said as he cut his meat into small pieces. Not one bite made it from his fork to his mouth. Jeno watched him mutilate his meal like it had done him wrong and kept his mouth shut.

“You’re so hungry for gossip, anything will please you,” Chenle said.

Jeno brought his food to his mouth with simple repetition, focusing on the bite, staring into his cup of water. No matter how hard he wanted to melt into the background of the dining hall, he’d forced Jaemin’s attention onto him weeks ago by asking for language lessons, and now he was in his sights. Jaemin’s gaze betrayed nothing of the nature of his questioning, but Jeno knew better. Jeno had seen Peter.

“Are you religious?” Jaemin asked.

Without looking up from his plate, Jeno knew the question was for him. He gripped his fork tight. The silver dug into his palm. “Not particularly.”

“Interesting,” Jaemin said again. His voice fell out of the simplicity of Yeol, dipping into warm Aurelian as he pressed further. “Your mother?”

Jeno looked at him, if only to narrow his eyes. If he’d hoped to silence Jaemin with a glare, he was a fool. Jaemin was not someone who shied away from the threat of antipathy alone.

“I’ve heard Yeolijn gods are tempestuous,” Jaemin murmured in Yeol again, inviting Chenle. “God blood runs hot.”

Undoubtedly, Peter had run his mouth. It had only taken a few hours -- one day at Mortecole and he was set out to ruin everything. Jeno wondered what had brought his invitation. Jeno was the fighter, while Peter tended to stand on the sidelines to watch. It must have been his tongue.

“You seem to have some experience with the divine,” Jeno said. Where the joke may have fallen, his words were all edge.

Jaemin tapped his knife to his lips. He tried not to smile -- for Jeno’s benefit, maybe, but they both knew he’d already won.

Grief was a rough edged and salty thing. Jeno couldn’t swallow the seawater filling his mouth. _Devil boy_ , his father had said, his hand heavy on the back of Jeno’s neck as they passed the temples. The priests had watched them walk through the sand, but their gaze made Jeno feel like he was drowning. _You have eyes like the moon,_ his mother had said, _sad eyes._ He knew the rumors, had heard the dark imagination of the townspeople who spun tales about his mother, about who she’d lain with on the beach at night, with only the moon to watch, and the boy who’d come the following year, with blood running hot and a temper to match. The temple attendants knew, and asked for him, and his earthly father refused. Moon-devil eyes on a devil boy.

“Gods are for people who can’t fend for themselves,” Chenle said, in that casual lazy manner of speaking, where nothing was important enough to rob him of time.

Jeno had to agree.

His silence couldn’t quell the rumors, but he found the whispers had the opposite effect to his reputation. At home, neighbors gave him a wide berth, boys at school would sneer as he passed and spit on the ground. There was no love for a bastard, even one supposedly heaven-born. At Mortecole, trainees crept around corners just to sneak in a moment with him, strangers who had trained much longer than him started to approach him in the courtyard, eager to spar with the boy they’d heard would spill god blood. It was an honor and a threat. There was a mark on his head that Jeno was not convincing enough to erase.

Chenle wasn’t so impressed. He waved off a student from the newest cohort as they fumbled through an invitation to spar with Jeno, and hauled Jeno away by the arm. “I’m getting tired of this,” he said, “they know you’re mine.”

The Wolf had not pronounced them even worthy of a Twin yet. But Jeno’s heart flared with a feeling he’d never known before. It was unrecognizable, so he ruffled Chenle’s hair instead of responding, shaking his head. That Chenle, always so unmoved, would be so territorial over cursed Jeno, was a pleasant surprise that he resolved to accept.

“It doesn’t matter to me,” Chenle told him again, fixing his amused gaze suddenly serious on him. “Gods have never served me.”

“Gods don’t serve anyone,” Jeno said. “We serve them.”

“We serve The Wolf,” Chenle said. It was simple. And it was true.

✵✵✵✵✵✵✵

Six months passed since Jeno stepped through Mortecole’s iron gates. It felt like a week or a year. Traditional time didn’t mean much here. Instead, he measured time he the new breadth of his shoulders, the ease with which he could now wield a sword, the tan he built from hours training in the sun.

He knew that the time for a trial was coming. There was a separation between students who had and had not passed The Wolf’s tests, even though it was hard to immediately distinct. There were no guidelines to go by, no schedule to follow that wasn’t set out for them day by day. Jeno knew the time would come that he would lay eyes on The Wolf himself, but he walked each day with careful feet, not knowing when The Wolf would step out of the shadow.

But when The Wolf came, the shadows were cast by the moon alone.

Jeno was roused from his sleep, just minutes after he’d sunken into his cot and closed heavy lids.

The Twins who retrieved his cohort were pale and blonde, with eyes that seemed to glow in the night like big cats. “The Wolf will judge your worth.”

In the halls, they met another group. Freshly awoken, he couldn’t recognize the faces in the dim candlelight. Jeno’s ears were ringing as he followed them outside. He was tired -- bone deep exhaustion from pushing his limits. He felt dazed, his mouth dry. He cast a glance around for Chenle and saw him studying his feet as they walked, lips pressed in a firm line.

He didn’t immediately understand the trial. It dawned on him in pieces. The sparring arena was cleared of the usually scattered weapons -- they were lined up on one end, clean and neat. On the other end stood a newly erected dais, with a singular seat, like a throne. It was tall, looked heavy, but the man who sat on it made it seem built for a child. He was massive, sitting perfectly straight, his face as clear as the sky, lit by the moon.

The Wolf did not look so canine as Jeno had imagined, but stomach acid burned the back of his mouth at the idea of his attention being pinned on him.

They were brought to stand along the edge of the arena. Opposite them, was a line of chairs. Twenty chairs, exactly half the size of their group. It washed over him like cold rain. Jeno’s head spun. He jerked his head to look at Chenle, at Jaemin, and found that he could not meet either of their gazes. He could only suck in a deep breath of midnight air, and hope that fate had not brought them together just to kill each other, six months later.

“You will fight,” one of the Twins said. Jeno heard it muffled through the sound of his own blood, pumping wildly through his veins. “And if you survive, you will be allowed to sit before The Wolf.”

One moment, Jeno’s head was spinning, and the next he was being shoved into the arena. He blinked his vision clear -- his whirling thoughts would not help him survive this. How many pairs had gone before him -- two, three? There were a few chairs with bodies in them across from where he stood, but he didn’t dare look, too nauseated by the idea that he would not find Chenle or Jaemin sitting there already.

He steeled himself, raising his eyes to the person in front of him. The person he would have to kill.

Peter stared back at him.

The high walls around them blocked the ocean, but Jeno felt the sea spray slap his face as if they stood on the beach, two boys facing each other with the moon in their eyes and nothing else. But there was something else, wasn’t there? Jeno had to kill him, or let himself be killed. It was an easy choice to make. He hated himself for it.

Though there were swords set out for them to hack and slash each other with, this fight burned in Jeno’s limbs, cracking him open from the inside out. He got inside Peter’s guard and hit him with bare hands, his raw knuckles splitting again with the impact of bone against bone, his fist colliding with his childhood friend’s jaw.

Peter gripped his shoulders and drove his knee into his stomach. Jeno doubled over, wheezing out a short breath, but never had a chance to recover. Peter shoved him back.

They stumbled away from each other, taking into account their brief test of each other as they took a breath. Peter spat at Jeno’s feet. His lips were slick with his own blood. Jeno imagined he could not look much better himself.

“I thought you had the blood of gods,” he said. “I doubt the gods throw such weak punches.”

Jeno took a few deep breaths, recentering himself again after the initial blow to his ribs. It did not hurt enough to stop him, but his sides ached when he filled his lungs.

Peter didn’t know when to save his energy. He spat again, hoping to rile something fervent in Jeno. He succeeded. The insult was demeaning the first time, and too much to ignore the second.

“Still,” Peter said, “I’d like to see your blood.”

Jeno tried not to take it personally. His blood was the cost of Peter’s life. But their past made it impossible to see beyond Peter’s flapping mouth. Any pretense of sympathy fled as Jeno watched Peter size him up, preparing his path to victory.

Jeno ducked as Peter grabbed the hilt of the sword at his side and drew it. The blade arced through the air where his neck had been, seconds before.

Three months ago Jeno had been bested in a sword fight. It would not happen again. He met him easily with his own blade, months of practice informing his steps and swings. Peter’s swings were energetic and frantic. Jeno tried to keep his mind clear, focused, and let strategy guide his motions instead. He wasn’t sure when he’d bested him, but he lost his fear. His hands felt hot as he stood over Peter, in a near mirror image to himself and Chenle, months before. In this reflection, it was him who had gotten the upperhand, without any tricks, relying only on his own skill and desperation to stay alive. He took a deep breath and felt pride inflame in his lungs. But it stuttered out quickly. He still had not won.

Jeno rolled Peter over with his foot. Peter set his jaw, glaring up at him as Jeno pressed the tip of his sword to his neck. He wished he wouldn’t look at him. He wished he could close his eyes. Was this the price? Jeno could live, but the life he’d take would be burned into his memory. Would he carry the look in Peter’s eyes, as he drove the sword through him, for the rest of his cursed life? Out of some sick respect, inherited from his mother perhaps, Jeno kneeled beside the boy until he stopped breathing.

Though his stomach was roiling, Jeno got to his feet. He lifted his gaze from the dust, dark with blood, to the dais.

The Wolf’s expression remained the same – unimpressed. He raised his left hand and flicked his fingers to the seats, nearly empty, on the other side of the arena.

Jeno knew one of those seats was his, waiting for him to take his place, but he couldn’t feel his legs. He remained where he stood, the ground still firm beneath him, the moon still high. He could feel the cool night breeze blowing between his blood-wet fingers, but could not move them.

One of the Twins beside the Wolf turned their head. Their hood hid most of their face in shadow, but the moon lit the fast movement of their lips. Still, The Wolf’s expression stayed blank.

Jeno could not stand there forever.

He forced himself to lower his gaze to the boy lying at his feet. Peter’s golden hair rustled with the same breeze that chilled Jeno’s skin, but he felt nothing now. His eyes were wide, and dry. At least he didn’t bother crying when Jeno took his life. He had already given it away when he crossed through the gate.

Peter was a worthy shadow, but Jeno was faster. He supposed that meant he was worth more.

Jeno had not been raised with the guidance of his mother’s old religion. Her gods did not live in his body, no matter how he had been born, no matter the whispered truths and untruths. The only prayer he could offer this boy was the breath that passed between his lips.

Jeno would not wait to become a sacrifice himself. He lifted his chin, turned on his heel, and crossed the arena to his seat.

The boy sitting beside him looked young, but his smile was ancient. While Jeno wiped his palms on the black trousers tight around his thighs, the boy beside him inspected the underside of his fingernails, never bothering to wipe the blood splattered over half his face, smeared over his lips. Belatedly, Jeno recognized Jisung, who he’d sparred with only once. Their fight had ended with a curved bruise on Jeno’s forearm, in the shape of Jisung’s teeth. It took a week to heal.

Jeno waited for the Wolf to call the next fight. The fear that Jeno’s hesitation might have cost him his seat thrummed through his veins. But the next pair stepped out into the arena, and the next, and the next, and still Jeno sat.

When the dawn came, the dust had become mud, black with blood.

The last victor rose from her knees with the clay halfway up to her elbows. She wiped her sweat from her brow, painting her skin with the crimson color of her win.

Jeno’s hands were shaking, but he pressed his palms together between his thighs, and swallowed the bile rising in his throat.

Killers were born, and killers were made. At Mortecole, they came together, and it didn’t matter who was who. All their hands were covered in blood, just the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm on a journey of pure feral self-indulgence. thanks for joining me here! i hope you are intrigued...let me know what you think!
> 
> [twt](https://twitter.com/jpseudy)  
> [cc](https://curiouscat.me/jpseudy)


	2. Chapter 2

To shape fine killers Mortecole pushed its students physically, requiring hours of endurance and skill training in a variety of arms. Jeno’s farm-tough hands bore new wounds from climbing the cliff face. The first few times a rope was provided. Then it was taken away, success be damned. Fortunately, Jeno would rather shred his hands on the sharp rocks than fall and bash his head on his way into the ocean.

But physical prowess was not the only necessary set of skills. There were other lessons essential to becoming an efficient shadow. They had to understand geographical facts, know political figures, the art of negotiation, bartering, languages, including dialect. 

The  _ phwip  _ of a delicate fan from the Northeast, its folds stretched open over a face — closed again to gesture, then held over the mouth as the eyes look down, up, down, up—-

“I’m going to get a twitch,” Chenle muttered in exasperation, pressing the sculpted wooden edge of his fan to his brow. 

_ Phwip.  _ Jaemin fanned himself as he leaned against the ledge of the open dormitory window. He was a natural, of course. He would never accidentally throw his fan into the air and bounce it off his nose, couldn’t even if he’d tried. Not that Jeno would either. And if anyone said they’d seen him do so and he found out about it, they would be in trouble. 

“Don’t be such babies,” Jaemin sighed. “It really isn’t difficult. How do you expect to seduce a high born if you don’t put in a little effort?”

“Why should we put in the effort? High borns don’t care about the details with all that coin in their purse,” Jeno said. He gave up on the lazy spin he’d been practicing with his fan and laid back on his bed. He held it up over his face. At least it could be useful for one thing, besides decoration. The fan blocked the sun streaming through the window, letting it reach Jeno’s half-closed eyes only through a filter of deep red paper. 

“It’s not like we’ll actually ever have to do anything like that,” Chenle muttered. 

From under the rosy shade, Jeno caught a gentle, withering look cross over Jaemin’s face.  _ Simple boys,  _ Jaemin always called them. The high tilt of his chin may have demanded respect, but the deep purple pits under his eyes and the fine lines around his mouth showed a boy who carried too much experience in this world. Jamin had been surviving long before Mortecole. He never tried to be mean, but his emotions tended to precede his self-restraint. There was always a shadow or something flitting across his face.

Without speaking, Jaemin was right. 

“We’ll be prepared for whatever we have to do,” Jeno said.

Summer in Avimlore was not nearly as humid as it was on the islands, but the sun beat relentlessly down on the black walls of Mortecole. The air in the dormitory was heavy, warm and suffocating. Jeno couldn’t help but doze, muscles relaxing one by one as sleep gnawed at the edges of his mind. 

Beyond his drowsiness, something tugged at his attention. His head was full of cotton, his eyes dry as he tried to open them again, the sounds of the dormitory buzzing around his ears like careless bees. A sharp cry pierced through the fuzzy cloud that surrounded him. He jolted upright in his bed, wheeling his head to locate the source of the sound.

One of the boys from the last cohort was pressed up against the wall, his arm twisted behind his back. Jeno recognized him vaguely -- he’d just arrived last week, still green and too nosy for his own good. He was big though, carrying thick muscles from his past life into this new one. His bulk was what made this interesting -- the person holding his against the wall was much leaner, their limbs held in tense control, even though their narrowed eyes betrayed the struggle it took for them to keep the other boy there.

Jeno rubbed his eyes. He knew him, too, with the close shaved head and flashing golden eyes. He was the boy attached at the hip to the one who wielded knives so casually he might have been born with them in his hands. Jeno glanced around them and didn’t see his equally shaved head around, but he doubted he was far away. 

It felt like Jeno’s shoulders were a scale -- on one side was the desire to go back to sleep, or at least sit back and see how this would unfold. On the other, the urge to get up and put an end to the mess before it turned nasty. The dormitory was the one place they were supposed to be able to rest and relax, although Jeno knew that wasn’t always the case, judging by the sounds that filtered between the bunks when night closed over them. Still, an all out brawl wouldn’t bode well for all of them.

Jeno made up his mind and shifted to the edge of his bed to stand. Before he got far a hand on his shoulder pushed him down. Jeno frowned, following the hand up to the arm, and then to the owner. 

“Someone has to--” Jeno started.

Chenle squeezed Jeno’s shoulder and shook his head. He knew Jeno wouldn’t argue with him, not aloud and in public. They could save it for the sparring ring. Quieted, Jeno sucked his cheeks between his molars, using the bite and Chenle’s touch to ground himself against his temper.

Across the dormitory, Golden Eyes twisted his victim’s wrist hard, drawing a cry from his mouth. Jeno curled his hands into fists, pressing them down into the mattress. Stubbornly, Chenle held him. It was a lesson for Jeno in self-restraint, something he hadn’t had to use since coming to Mortecole, but more than that it was a test of Chenle’s determination.

“Do you want to say that again?” Golden Eyes asked when the cry petered out. He tipped his head close to his captive’s ear. The upturn of his lips was more beastly snarl than smile. “A little louder maybe?”

The boy against the wall seemed to be weighing his options. His eyes darted back and forth, but no one had come to his rescue. No one would. His assailant radiated danger. This was a play that would have to continue until the final scene.

Jostled again, he spit out, “You’ve got a pretty plaything. That’s all I-- ah! That’s all I fucking said.”

“That’s what I thought. But I expected you to be a bit smarter and change your mind.”

Jeno heard the crack of bone before his mind registered the flash of movement. In one moment the boy was pressed against the wall, the next he was on the floor, groaning as he clutched at his own face. Blood spilled out between his fingers. From his nose or from his mouth, Jeno couldn’t tell. Jeno half-rose from his bed before Chenle shoved him down again.

“Are you crazy?” Chenle grunted. “He’ll tear you apart.”

Jeno would have liked to see him try. He bit down hard on his tongue, restraining himself twice as much as Chenle was holding him back. But it was too much to bear when he watched Golden Eyes kick the green boy in the side, taking advantage of his upper hand. This wasn’t the sparring ring, where playing dirty was expected. This wasn’t fair. Jeno couldn’t sit patiently and wait for the interruption to his relaxing afternoon to be over.

For all of Chenle’s strength, he couldn’t hold Jeno down. He swatted Chenle’s hands off him, crossing to the tussle. Already, Golden Eyes had stepped back, surveying his damage.

"Are you finished?" Jeno asked him, incapable of keeping the edge out of his voice. He knelt to pry the boy's hands away from his face, but between the horrified wide-eyed look he was served and all the blood, he couldn't make heads or tails of the situation. He sighed, "And you, are you finished, too? Calm down."

The room had gone quiet around him. Jeno glanced over his shoulder. By his bunk, Chenle stood, his arms crossed over his chest. He didn't look so upset as he did wary. On the contrary, Jaemin remained lounging against the windowsill. Though he had stopped fanning his face, a smile played over his lips. It vanished back into his mysterious depths when he caught Jeno looking. 

Jaemin tilted his chin up, his gaze darting over Jeno's head. Jeno followed his look. 

Golden Eyes stood above him, looking down. The animalistic snarl had gone, perhaps fleeing with the force of his blow to the boy still bleeding on the floor. His hands hung at his sides, palms open. Without a facial expression or an answer to Jeno's initial question, it was hard to tell if Jeno would soon be joining the company of the bleeding and whimpering.

But Jeno was distracted by more than his unreadable mood. Jeno prided himself on his observation skills, the quick analysis of the direction of attack, the one glance that would tell him his opponent’s weakest points in a fight. He was sure, almost certainly, that this boy’s eyes were molten gold, glinting like coins in the sun. But they were brown. Not ugly, or dull, there was nothing wrong with brown -- they still glimmered with the underlying idea that he might be seething beneath his smooth veneer. But brown, just the same, not gold.

Jeno shook himself inwardly. If this boy might take a swing at him, he wasn’t going to be caught off guard just because he was busy gazing deeply into his eyes.

"Are you?" Jeno prompted.

The boy squinted at him. "What?"

"Are you finished being a bully?" Jeno asked. "Or are you still bored? I'm sure you can find better ways to put your energy to use. Maybe you can join the kids scrubbing out the baths."

"I don't kneel," the boy said.

Jeno shook his head. Now he was too aware that he was on his knees in front of this proud young man, and wished he didn't feel the urge to leap up, as if that would be any less humiliating than squatting here trying to help a boy who didn't want help, while being looked down on by another. 

He moved to rise, but was stopped by the sharp press of thin metal against his throat, just under the curve of his jaw. 

“Having trouble?”

He didn’t know the voice, but he could guess the owner. No one else at Mortecole had the same affinity for a blade. Jeno couldn’t stand with the knife tucked so neatly under his jaw, but he could lift his head. He looked up, taking in the quirked brow, angled just as sharp as his smile. 

Despite pressing a knife to his throat, the boy standing just behind him didn’t seem to deem it necessary to even look at him. He faced his partner instead. From far away, their haircut made them seem similar, even their builds were noticeably different. This close, they couldn’t have been more unalike.

“You know better than to take two at once, don’t you?”

“This one?” A roll of the eyes. “He’s all tongue.”

“Want me to cut it out?”

“What, just for me?”

“I’ll take him off your hands.” Chenle’s voice washed over Jeno’s burning ears like cool water, slipping between the discussion on the fate of Jeno’s mouth. 

Silence fell over the little group. Jeno swallowed hard, fighting to keep a straight face despite the pressure of the knife. 

“Are we supposed to know you?”

Jeno found the attention back on him. He looked up and met the gaze of the boy in front of him. His full lips drew a knowing smile over his face. “You should keep better track of your things.”

Jeno bit his tongue until he was in danger of severing it himself. He might have spit out an argument about his state of possession -- if he belonged to anyone it was The Wolf, as they all did -- but he still had the presence of mind to understand the situation he was in. One wrong word and the knife would easily slip across his throat. 

“He slipped away,” Chenle murmured. “I’ll keep my eye on him from now on.”

The pressure of the blade left his throat. Jeno inhaled a deep, shuddering breath, his hands flexing over his thighs. He stood and brought his hand up, rubbing his fingers over the place the knife had been, just to see if there was any thin slice in his skin he hadn’t noticed. He was struck, briefly, by the sight he made, the mirror image of the first time he saw the boy standing now in front of him months before. 

Now the quiet interest that had pulsed through his veins soured, and he looked far uglier than Jeno had first thought. With pursed lips, his tongue throbbing from his own bite, Jeno inspected him for faults, only growing more annoyed when he couldn’t find one. Even the moles dotting his face looked like stars.

Chenle slipped his hand around Jeno’s arm, squeezing his bicep. Jeno only just resisted the urge to jostle him off, considering how hard Chenle would hit back if he jabbed him in the ribs with his elbow.

“Just stay out of other people’s business, won’t you?” 

Jeno’s attention was forced back to the boy who had held him hostage. The knife was nowhere in sight now. He wondered how he managed to hide sheaths up the tight lacing of their long-sleeved shirts. Maybe the boy’s skin itself was made up of places to hide things away. His face could have convinced him of the ridiculous idea, full of sharp corners and thinly-veiled emotion. As opposed to his partner, it was clear that this boy couldn’t disguise his feeling so easily, and his bitter amusement glimmered in his eyes.

“If you’re going to harass people in front of me, it becomes my business,” Jeno snapped.

Jeno felt Chenle’s grip tighten, but the words were already loose. He held his head high. If he was going to be stuck through with a slender little blade for speaking his mind, at least he would stand by it.

“Relax,” the first boy murmured. “He wasn’t getting anything he didn’t deserve. Don’t you believe in justice?”

Jeno faltered. He glanced sideways at the boy on the floor, still holding his face together. He’d gone quiet since Jeno entered the ring, as if by going very still and holding in his pained whimpers, the attention might leave him altogether. But Jeno had the feeling the worst had yet to come for him.

“What’d he do?” Jeno asked.

It was the wrong question to ask. The blade returned in a second, the tip pressed just to Jeno’s belly. Jeno steeled himself to be slit from stomach to throat, but a hand landed on the boy’s wrist, curling fine fingers around it. 

Jeno had thought Jaemin was the prettiest boy at Mortecole, possibly in all of Yeolijn, but each passing moment proved his assumptions wrong. He wanted to bury his head in the dirt outside, or bash his own head into one of the thick outer walls -- here he stood with a knife pointed at him, and he was thinking about knobby knuckles and slender fingers, wondering if his hands were warm.

“Renjun, enough.”

The boy with the knife,  _ Renjun,  _ hesitated a few seconds before reluctantly retracting the blade. 

“Thank you for your concern,” Not-Golden Eyes said. Jeno was startled to find he was speaking to him, thanking him. It was a strange dismissal, not one Jeno was eager to accept. The moment felt fragile, glass between them waiting to be broken either by Jeno’s obstinance or Renjun’s slashing knife. Chenle sensed it too and stepped back, tugging Jeno’s arm. 

Jeno resisted, fixing his gaze on the boy before him. “Your name.”

“Donghyuck,” he said.

Jeno let himself be dragged back to his bed. He rolled around the name in his mouth, holding his breath as he practiced the shape, parting his lips. 

“You’re--” Chenle started. He deemed Jeno hopeless, not bothering to finish, and smacked Jeno’s shoulder with his fan. 

“Donghyuck,” Jeno said to himself. He watched Renjun and Donghyuck survey their victim on the floor before taking leave of the dormitory. When he pried his attention from them, he found Jaemin, too, watching the door they had vanished through.

✵✵✵✵✵✵✵

  
  


The next morning came with a commotion. Often Jeno was one of the first to wake, stealing a few breaths of dawn alone. But he was surprised again once his reluctant eyes opened. On one end of the dormitory, students huddled around a bed. It seemed as if half the school was already awake, on high alert.

Jeno slipped off his mattress, running his hand through his hair, and cast a glance Chenle’s way. His friend slept on, just a lump tucked under his uniform blue blanket. Jaemin, too, was still in bed, though he had sat up, observing the huddle silently.

No one looked when Jeno sidled up to the crowd, peering over the heads of his peers to see what all the fuss was about. He wasn’t prepared for the sight.

Overnight, the boy’s face had sported new swelling and bruising, fanning out from his nose where he’d been hit the previous afternoon. He was nearly unrecognizable from it, aside from all the blood staining the bed brown. Were it not for the other wound, he might have had a rough morning with a horrible headache. But he wouldn’t have another morning. Sometime after they had all fallen asleep, someone had snuck up to the bed and slit his throat.

Jeno stepped back, slapping a hand to his mouth as he moved back to his bed. He kept his gaze on the floor but couldn’t erase the sight from his mind, even by boring holes into the plain floor with his eyes. It was one thing to kill someone or be killed by them. That was an easy choice for boys like Jeno, like Chenle and Jaemin, who could only look ahead and try to survive. But to kill over a spat, just for petty revenge? Wasn’t breaking his nose enough of a punishment? Maybe it would have been, had Jeno not intervened.

He felt Jaemin’s questioning stare but he couldn’t raise his eyes to meet Jaemin’s. He focused on dressing, threading the laces of his shirt through their many loops, and tried to ignore the Twin bowed heads on the end of the room, opposite the body. If he looked, he was worried he would see Twin smiles. That was something he could not stomach.

✵✵✵✵✵✵✵

  
  


Along with the horrible etiquette classes, Jeno dreaded meeting with the language tutors. Just like the students, tutors came to Mortecole from all over. Jeno had a firm grasp on the island dialects as well as standard Yeol and Jaemin’s earnest lessons gave him a leg up in Aurelian tests. Everything else left his mind in tatters. Classrooms exhausted him far more than physical exercise. 

The sun set as Jeno stared down at the book in his hands. Despite the waning light outside, the lights in the halls glowed throughout the night, steady and dependable.

The bell for dinner would ring soon, echoing down the halls with a comforting familiarity. The first few days the bell made Jeno jump, but now it just sent warmth into his limbs. The knowledge that he had a hot dinner, a bath, and sleep waiting for him was never something he took for granted. He wasn't sure who to thank, doubting it was the gods' blessing that had brought him here, so he thanked himself for surviving thus far and The Wolf was giving him the opportunity.

Still, Jeno didn't feel very thankful as he stared down at the page, his vision swimming. This language was one of his worst -- a tongue-twisting series of phrases from the desert that blurred in front of him. He took a deep breath and released it in a heavy sigh, tipping his head back against the wall. Maybe he could rest his eyes for just a moment. There were few people with steps light enough to take him by surprise, especially in the empty hallway where every noise was amplified ten times its size.

The events of the previous afternoon ran over in his head, followed by the gruesome discovery of the morning. Was it his fault, he wondered, that someone had turned up dead?

_ Justice _ , he heard, in the horribly beautiful boy's level voice,  _ it was justice.  _

For what? What deserved that price?

"Hello."

Jeno startled upright, his eyes flying open. Jisung, with dark hair falling into his eyes as he looked down at him, his hands crossed behind his back, lifted an unimpressed brow.

"Hi," Jeno said, rubbing his eyes. He hadn't realized how easily it was to drift off once he'd let himself relax, and the threat of sleep clung to his eyelids in sticky obstinance. "What is it?"

Jisung ran his tongue over his lower lip. He seemed to mill over his words while Jeno waited with wavering patience. "You know Aurelian."

"Um," Jeno said, "I know a little."

"I'm not good at it," Jisung said carefully. The way he spoke led Jeno to believe he was from very far away, how the syllables of standard Yeol clung to the edges of his mouth like they didn't quite know how to fall out. "Can you help?"

Jeno considered him. Jisung was a brutal opponent in the sparring arena. Though he'd only had a few opportunities to fight him, Jeno had always walked away a little worse for wear. In Jisung's case, he absorbed a hit like he'd been made to take them. Jeno saw a little of himself in Jisung, and a little bit of the more shadowed parts of the world that hid around corners, the glimmering jewel in a crow's grasp that tricked the eye.

Jeno had no reason not to like Jisung, despite the surprising bite that had left Jeno with a nasty bruise a while back. He nodded. "I'll try, but you should ask someone else. Do you know Jaemin?"

Jisung tilted his head to the side. The corners of his lips twitched upward, but his face remained otherwise uninvested. It might have been a trick of the light or Jeno’s bleary eyes. "Introduce us?

Jeno nodded. He opened his mouth to ask Jisung if he wanted to start now -- Jeno would much rather practice his Aurelian than this awkward nomadic language he could barely read -- but was stopped by the dinner bell. It clanged three times, bouncing off all of Mortecole's walls. "He'll be at dinner," he said instead.

Jisung offered him a hand up and they walked together to the dining hall. Jisung was a little shy, offering only a few answers to Jeno's polite conversation.

The dining hall was nearly full by the time they passed through the dark wooden doors, but Jeno led Jisung expertly through their fellow students, heading for his usual table. Chenle was already there when they took their seats. He looked at Jisung over the rim of his cup, sizing him up before he slid his gaze over to Jeno, searching.

Jeno shrugged and poured himself a cup of water from one of the pitchers in the center of the table. “You know Jisung.”

“Yes,” Chenle said simply. 

“Where’s Jaemin?”

Chenle shrugged back, feigning a thin mask of indifference. “He said he had to run an errand.”

It was a strange response, but Jaemin was a strange boy. “He’ll probably just be late,” Jeno told Jisung, who did not seem convinced. 

The younger boy wore his frown throughout the meal, gripped his knife tight as he cut through his portion of meat. He resisted conversation and swore in cool, fluent Aurelian on his way out. 

Jaemin never came to dinner.

✵✵✵✵✵✵✵

Jeno lifted his cupped palms to his neck, pouring the hot water down his chest. It ran in rivulets across his collarbones, streaking through the thin layer of dried sweat covering his body.The dormitory baths were always steamy, the water scalding. At first, it had been an uncomfortable experience, undressing in front of strangers. Now, strangers or not, the bodies around him were just as bruised and beaten as his own had been when he arrived. Though his body may have looked the same, it felt different. His scars were badges of honor rather than shameful consequences. He didn’t think twice about wiggling his fingers through the complicated lacing of his clothes and discarding them for the laundry.

As the water worked the ache from his overworked muscles, his mind was busy with its own worries. It would have been nice to let the steam soothe the frayed edges of his thoughts. Instead, Jeno squinted into the clouds rising from the baths and washed his body while working his mind. 

He could not fault Renjun and Donghyuck for their sense of justice. It was the same one he possessed, the one they had come here to follow. He wondered if he would reach the point where he would be disposed to kill someone for disrespecting his partner. He tried to imagine the moment, sure he would come up with an absolute answer, a resounding  _ no.  _ Instead, he thought of how he might help a wounded partner and came up only with the image of Chenle in his arms, bleeding out from some unseen wound. He thought,  _ Yes, I probably would.  _

His head pounded. Jeno splashed water into his face, hoping it might wash away the disquieting idea. All around him, other students sloshed around in the water. He had given up the possibility of being snuck up on here, and realized his foolishness as Renjun suddenly stepped in front of him.

Jeno blinked at their proximity. Renjun’s lashes clung together damply. Jeno didn’t have the time to study him further, tense as Renjun cupped the back of his neck and tugged him even closer. 

“Jeno,” Renjun said. Despite the temperature of this room, Jeno shivered. He blinked and the water was pink with his blood -- he blinked again and the vision was gone, his skin still intact, holding him all together.

Jeno glanced down at Renjun’s hands, but they stayed empty as he leaned in close. Renjun’s breath was hot against his ear. “Did you like my present?”

Jeno thought back on his day, trying to locate the moment he missed Renjun giving him something. If this was another silly game, Renjun might have just been waiting for him to ask, so he had to consider what he would be losing by giving up the truth -- that he had no idea what he meant.

Without seeing it, Jeno knew the longer his pause, the wider Renjun’s smile stretched. 

“Oh,” Renjun murmured, “you didn’t. I’m disappointed.”

Jeno grunted. “You sound like it.”

“Look closer next time,” Renjun said. “You’re letting me down.”

“I wasn’t aware you had high expectations of me.”

Renjun tsked, clicking his tongue against his teeth. He squeezed the back of Jeno’s neck, his fingers digging hard into Jeno’s skin. Jeno gritted his teeth, resisting the urge to smack him away or lean in a little closer. It was hard, deciding which he wanted to do more, because he was still a naked boy standing close to another, and Renjun’s skin was remarkably untouched for someone so dirty in a fight.

Renjun said, “I have the feeling you’re not going away any time soon. Might as well extend a hand,” and slipped away.

Jeno worked his jaw as he stared down into the water where Renjun had stood a moment before. He could still feel his hand on his neck, his cheeks hot for reasons other than the temperature of the room. 

✵✵✵✵✵✵✵

  
  


A present. A gift. Jeno pondered over it as he lay in bed. The lights had gone out more than an hour before, but he could not give pause to his racing mind. Jaemin still hadn’t come back, his bed sitting empty, and Jeno couldn’t even focus enough on that fact to worry over it. Chenle had avoided his eye as they crawled into bed, and all around him people were fast asleep. But Jeno couldn’t close his eyes -- someone had died just across the room, by the hand of someone here, and still they slept. Jeno tensed up even when blinking, his stomach rolling as he worried over how suddenly someone could creep up on him. Maybe Renjun hadn’t yet delivered his gift, and Jeno would wake up to find him standing over his cot preparing to present him with a fatal blow. 

Jeno took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. He was paranoid. If he died, he died. What could he do to stop death from coming for him -- if it was deserved, there was nothing to do but accept it.

Finally, Jeno closed his eyes. Seconds later, a weight settled on the side of his bed. He flung his hands out, hitting a warm body before he even managed to open his eyes again. In his surprised panic, he recognized Jaemin hovering over him.

Jeno swore viciously as he pushed at Jaemin. Unbothered, Jaemin grabbed Jeno’s hands and clasped them tightly between his own. For such a pretty face, his grip was unrelenting. 

Jeno huffed out a breath, whispered, “Why would you sneak up on me like that? I could have hurt you.”

Even in the dark, Jeno could sense Jaemin’s amusement. “No,” Jaemin murmured.

Jeno relaxed a little, letting Jaemin hold his hands without struggling. As soon as the tension released from his arms Jaemin let go. 

“I had to speak with you.”

“Now?” Jeno whispered.

Jaemin nodded. He looked over his shoulder, but the rest of the dormitory was still. A few quiet snores broke the quiet of the night, but otherwise everyone had settled into their beds without a care, despite the death that still clung to the air, sharp and toxic in the back of Jeno’s throat whenever he took a breath.

Jeno touched Jaemin’s elbow to draw his attention back to himself. 

“Hm?” Jaemin hummed, as if from somewhere far away.

“Tell me,” Jeno whispered, “everything. I want to sleep, and if you forget something and wake me again, I really will kill you.”

For the second time that day, Jeno had a boy leaning in close to whisper in his ear. Instead of the threat of a knife nearby, he had the press of Jaemin’s palm against his chest. The gesture was just to hold himself up and keep his balance without falling completely on top of Jeno or off the bed, but it made Jeno’s heart race just the same.

“I found us something to do,” Jaemin whispered, his breath fanning over the side of Jeno’s neck. “A little mission. Fun, right?”

“What for?”

Jaemin huffed. Jeno squirmed away from the sudden burst of air against his skin, but Jaemin curled his fingers into the front of Jeno’s night shirt and pulled him back. “Jeno, you’ll have to prove yourself sometime.  _ Do you trust me?” _

He finished in Aurelian. Jeno squinted into the dark.  _ “Yes.” _

He knew it was the right answer when Jaemin’s grip on him relaxed. Jeno hoped that Jaemin couldn’t feel the thundering of Jeno’s heart under his palm. Although Jeno was not as adept at burying all his feelings as his friends, he wished to keep some things to himself.

“Good,” Jaemin said, “then come with me on this job, and we’ll make the most of it.”

“Just us?” Jeno asked.

Jaemin shook his head. His hair tickled Jeno’s cheek. “Renjun and Donghyuck.”

Jeno tensed, frowning. “Chenle?”

“They won’t let us out in an odd number,” Jaemin murmured, “use your head.”

Jeno was trying to, but it didn’t add up regardless. “Then we take someone else. I won’t leave him behind.”

All Jaemin said was, “Aw.”

Jeno rolled his eyes, fighting the urge to shove Jaemin off the edge of the bed. He stamped down his temper. He said he trusted Jaemin and he meant it, so he would follow his lead despite his arrogance. “Who?”

Jaemin sighed. “You decide. Bring Chenle, and some other good kid, and meet us at the baths tomorrow after breakfast.”

He started to stand, pulling away, but Jeno grasped his waist with two hands, holding him still on the edge of the mattress. Jaemin didn’t budge an inch, not even to lean back down so Jeno sat up, bringing their faces only inches apart again. “Did you go to The Wolf? Were you able to speak to him? Is that who gave you a mission?”

Jaemin lifted a hand to poke Jeno’s cheek. “You’re such a little puppy, Jeno. Always so eager to please. No, I didn’t see him. I’d have brought you with me.”

Jeno held his breath as Jaemin dropped his hand again, his fingers trailing slowly down his jaw. He felt dizzy by the time his touch had disappeared. “Who, then?”

“I know people,” Jaemin said, his lowered voice thick with amusement. “You said you trust me.”

“I do.”

“Then lay your head down and get some rest.” Jaemin punctuated his sentence with a little shove to Jeno’s chest, and then he was gone again, already clear across the room by the time Jeno could spot him in the dark. Jeno watched him settle under his blanket, just as comfortable as everyone else. Even as Jeno lay down, he could still smell the death in the air, but he supposed it had always been there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am so so grateful for the support this fic has already received!! thank you for reading, please let me know what you think of all the...tension <3
> 
> [twt](https://twitter.com/jpseudy)   
>  [cc](https://curiouscat.me/jpseudy)


	3. Chapter 3

Jeno knew from meeting merchants on the islands that the wealthiest Aurelians grew their hair long and gathered it in a knot at the top of their heads. It was a decadent country that clung to the grandeur of illusion and appearance. He’d rarely seen an Aurelian with cropped hair, although he had admittedly not met very many. Before his hair was cut, Jaemin had had the citrus and sun-lightened hair of the Aurelian fashion. Jeno would not have been surprised if Jaemin had never seen himself with his natural hair color before, but now his roots were as dark as their robes, cut close to his scalp.

“What,” Jeno asked, “did you do?”

Jaemin lifted a hand, rubbing it over the fuzz that covered his head. “You don’t like it?”

“You look like a kid,” Chenle said. 

In truth, he looked older. The cut brought out the masculine angles of Jaemin’s face. His jaw looked a little harder, his lips pressed in a slim line — although that was due to his mouth set in an expression of faux-seriousness. He tilted his face this way and that, showing off. “Score out of ten?”

“Two,” Jeno said, just to be stubborn. “You look like them.”

“Hey,” Chenle said, sudden, “Jeno’s right. You could be triplets.”

“It wasn’t a one, though,” Jaemin said.

Jeno looked over him again. He took his time studying Jaemin from the top of his fuzzy head down to his boots. 

"Like what you see?"

Jeno felt his considering look morph into a hard stare. As much as Jaemin was trying to brush off the importance of what he'd done to himself, Jeno was determined to figure out what was making the wheels in his brain turn him down this path. First, the sudden job, then this strange shift in his appearance.

"I didn't think short hair was your style," Jeno said finally, rather than give in to Jaemin's teasing.

Jaemin sighed. "Someday I'll catch you off-guard."

"Unlikely at best," Chenle said. "What's this big quest you've gotten for us?"

Jaemin tapped his finger to his lips, gesturing for him to quiet. "Patience. Which little friend did you invite along?"

Jeno looked down the hall, wondering if the boy in question would be lurking around the corner. It was a behavior Jeno would not have been surprised to find in him. “Jisung.”

“Jisung,” Jaemin repeated. “The little one?”

“Little…” Chenle shook his head. “He has a baby face, but I wouldn’t call him ‘little.’”

“Ah,” Jaemin hummed, “no, I know him. The little vampire. You should’ve just said so.”

Jeno hadn’t considered the nickname that morning, when he slipped between the rows of beds to Jisung’s living space. He’d been wary of waking him – Jisung was fast, faster than Jeno, and quick to grab his opponent’s in headlocks – but he hadn’t had to disturb him at all. Jisung had already been awake, stretching.

"Good morning," Jeno said.

Jisung squinted at him. He leaned over his knees, tensing his back until his spine popped.

"Are you busy today?" Jeno asked.

"We're busy every day, are we not?" Jisung asked. "Or are you special?"

"I'm not special. Do you still want to meet Jaemin?"

Jeno had tried not to smile as he snagged Jisung's attention. Jisung, to his credit, tried not to show it either, glancing sideways at Jeno where he still stood at the foot of his bed. Jisung slipped off his cot and ran his hand through his brown hair – it stuck up at all angles. Jeno’s ears tingled -- now that he’d heard him speak Aurelian, the curves of his voice made sense. Maybe Jeno should have been more perceptive before, noting how Jisung sounded in Yeol was the same way Jaemin might have had he not had a courtly background and a practiced tongue. If only Jeno could grasp the reason he had lied so easily.

He wasn't sure exactly why Jisung would want to meet Jaemin, since it wasn't to learn Aurelian, as he had said. But he wanted to, and Jeno was reluctant to turn his back on him. When he didn't understand someone's motivations was the time he most needed to keep an eye on them, especially when they had a special interest in one of his friends.

"Will you introduce me?" Jisung asked.

"Yes," Jeno said, "meet me at the baths."

Jisung looked more suspicious that eager. Jeno couldn't blame him. Jeno passed him his shirt from the trunk at the end of his bed and watched Jisung pull the laces apart. "No one's going to hurt you. Not any of us."

Jisung considered him, passing his tongue over his teeth. And, yes, Jeno understood why he had attained the name little vampire, a boy with a fast grip and a tendency to bite when backed into a corner. For a moment, the image of Jisung's blood smeared lips on the night of their first trial passed over Jeno's eyes, but he blinked it away.

"Will you meet us? We need you."

"I will meet you," Jisung had said -- and he did. Jeno watched him come down the hall with his chin tilted up, proud and tense like he was walking into a lion's den. Did he know he was also a lion?

“What is this?” Jisung asked now.

“Jisung,” Jaemin said, tone warm and honey-sweet, “are you joining us on our mission today?”

“Mission,” Jisung repeated. Whatever protest lay on his tongue stayed there. His attention was caught by Jaemin’s short hair, just as Jeno’s had been, and he didn’t seem able to manage another response.

Jaemin hummed. “Good work, Jeno. Now we’re six.”

As if called by the gods themselves, Renjun and Donghyuck joined their party. Jisung had looked wary. Renjun’s twitchiness was infectious. Whether it was enthusiasm or nerves was hard to say with the slant of a smile cutting across his face.

There wasn’t time to press Jaemin further, though all the boys he’d gathered there were jumping to question his plans. He pushed the door to the baths open and led them inside. There waited the Twins that had led Jeno’s cohort into Mortecole for the first time. This early in the day the water had yet to be heated and there was no clouding their vision as they shuffled inside.

“There’s a trader who will be at the temple this afternoon. He has been giving transportation to criminals coming into Yeol at great cost, to them and to the country. We must settle the issue. We have provided you with supplies.”

The Twin with the scars gestured to a pile of fabric on the bench beside her. After a moment, Jeno recognized that they were six stacks of clothes, with varying colors.

“It is important that you inform the trader that he cannot continue this business,” the other Twin instructed, “but do not harm him too greatly. How you handle this issue will allow Mortecole to understand what kind of students you are and how your training should be continued, if at all.”

Jeno swallowed hard. What had Jaemin gotten them into?

“Where do we find him?” Donghyuck asked. Jeno held his breath. He had never interrupted a Twin before himself, but it was not surprising that Donghyuck found manners beneath him.

“He will be arriving to the Temple this afternoon,” the first Twin answered. “We trust that you will be able to complete this mission securely without drawing attention.”

They swept their gazes over the six boys. Jeno wondered what they saw in him, if it was anything different than what they had seem the first day, if they thought he would make it.

Together, the boys bowed to the two women before they left them alone. Once the door had shut again, Jaemin clapped his hands together and hurried over to piles the Twins left.

“Here, for you,” Jaemin said as he passed them out, pausing only briefly to sort them to his taste.

Chenle poked at the bundle Jaemin had set in front of him. “What are these?”

“Clothes,” Jisung said flatly.

Jeno set aside the boots resting on top of his stack and unfolded the top layer. It was a thin overcoat with wide sleeves that would hang loosely down to his hips when he raised his arms, deep green. There was a silk belt the width of three fingers to tie around the waist. “This doesn’t look easy to fight in.”

“No imagination,” Jaemin tsked.

“You should be able to fight wearing anything,” Renjun cut in. He slid his gaze over the rest of them, settling on Jeno. Jeno curled his fingers into the lacing on his collar, loosening it. Renjun watched until Jeno had undone his sleeves as well, averting his eyes just as Jeno started to pull his shirt off.

“It’s weird,” Chenle said, still looking down at his robes. They matched Jeno’s almost perfectly. “It’s so...colorful.”

Jaemin shook his head, already tying his own clothes -- a much plainer brown and beige outfit with simple lines and a tight fit. “We can’t go out in blue and black, we’ll be recognized straight away. Don’t look at me like that, Chenle, do you know how exciting it is for me to finally see you dressed up? It’s like taking a step into the past.”

Chenle flushed, his ears pink. “It’s really not.”

Jeno considered his clothes again as he tied the overcoat at the waist. The sweeping sleeves were a symbol of a higher class than he’d been born. The fabric felt expensive under the pads of his fingers. 

He, Chenle, and Renjun were dressed in outfits befitting scholars, of eldest sons in wealthy families. Donghyuck and Jisung had dressed to match Jaemin in common clothes Jeno was more familiar with. If he didn’t know what they were really trained to do he might assume the calluses on their palms were from loading and unloading ships at port or delivering goods to big households. 

“Don’t forget the hat,” Chenle said. He plopped a wide brimmed hat on Jeno’s head, flattening his hair to his forehead. Jeno huffed out a breath and adjusted it, feeling just a little silly.

“Isn’t this overkill?” Jeno asked.

“No,” Jaemin said, sighing. “None of you appreciate the effort I’ve made. Jeno, you look…”

Jeno waited, patient, and looped the ribbon falling over his cheek around one finger. He startled when he felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to face Donghyuck as he stepped in close.

“You’re supposed to tie this, so your hat stays on,” Donghyuck said. He didn’t wait for Jeno to respond, taking the cords in his own hands to tie them together under Jeno’s chin.

Jeno swallowed hard. He hoped Donghyuck couldn’t feel his throat bobbing under his knuckles, where they brushed over his throat so slightly. Donghyuck stepped away as soon as he’d finished. Jeno decided it was the humidity of the baths that made him feel woozy.

But despite Donghyuck’s distance, Jeno still felt the press of a body sudden against his side. Renjun slipped his fingers under the belt around Jeno’s waist. “Is this too tight?”

Jeno tensed. “Renjun.”

“Did you find my present yet?” Renjun murmured.

After he’d thought about it, Jeno understood that Renjun’s confrontation the night before in the baths could have been predicted. He was the type to slither in when no one else was looking – it only took one bite to render his victim useless. But here they had eyes on them. More than one pair. A few feet away, Chenle watched with a guarded expression.

“No,” Jeno said simply.

Renjun huffed. “I don’t believe you.”

“Where did you leave it?”

“Under your pillow,” Renjun hissed out.

“I didn’t find it.”

“You’re a liar,” Renjun said. His grip around Jeno’s belt tightened. Jeno cast his gaze around the room – he didn’t want to bring Chenle into this, it wasn’t his responsibility when they had yet to be bound to each other – and found Donghyuck.

“Renjun,” Donghyuck said. His voice dipped lower than Jeno had heard it before. “Leave it.”

“It was very generous of me,” Renjun murmured. Jeno couldn’t be sure if he was addressing him or Donghyuck. Silence seemed a better response than another denial. He clamped his mouth shut.

“It was a terrible gift,” Donghyuck said. “I took it away.”

Renjun’s grip on Jeno loosened. His fingertips stayed hooked around his belt, but his body had gone lax. “What?”

“I took it away before he saw it,” Donghyuck repeated.

Without further argument, Renjun stormed out of the room, the door sounding especially heavy as it swung shut after him. 

“Does he throw tantrums often?” Chenle asked. 

Donghyuck shook his head, but whether it was to disagree or dismiss the question, Jeno wasn’t sure. He looked tired.

“Throwing a fit when you don’t get your way is awfully childish,” Chenle said. 

Donghyuck pressed his lips together, his jaw working as he clenched his teeth. Jeno had the distant urge to reach out and pry his mouth open, see what devilish things lay on that tongue. But he didn’t want to risk losing his fingers to Donghyuck’s snapping teeth. 

“Did you take something from me?” Jeno asked suddenly. 

Donghyuck glanced up, just once, but it was enough give to latch onto. 

“What was he trying to give me?” Jeno pressed. 

“Are you being courted?” Chenle laughed. Jeno didn’t bother acknowledging the comment. He fixed his gaze on Donghyuck and waited. The silence stretched on long enough for even Jaemin to start whispering to Chenle, and Jeno was ready to press on again when Donghyuck finished lacing his boots and stood up straight, looking him in the eye. 

“If you want the gift, I’m sure he can get you another. But I thought I’d save you the drama,” Donghyuck said. “After cutting out that bastard’s tongue, he put it under your pillow.”

Jeno recoiled, left speechless. He stared at Donghyuck, who shrugged. Across the room, Jisung pressed his wrist to his mouth, but it wasn’t enough to hide his smile.

“You’re welcome,” Donghyuck said on his way out. 

✵✵✵✵✵✵✵

Mortecole’s gates opened like the gates of the underworld, spitting them out onto the street. Jeno’s chest tightened as he felt eyes on him, but as soon as the city looked, it looked away.

“Like they said, we need to be subtle. We should split up.” Jaemin looked around at them meaningfully. Jeno got it -- as a group of men the same age, dressed in various stations of society, they stood out. 

“Three groups,” Donghyuck concluded.

Jaemin shook his head. “That won’t do. What if we get cornered?”

Jeno didn’t want to point out that they would be the ones doing the cornering. He wanted to think it would be obvious enough. But that wasn’t the point Jaemin was getting at.

“Two groups of three.”

Donghyuck looked uneasy at the suggestion. Even Renjun’s lips were pursed. Partnership was the cornerstone of Mortecole. As close as Jeno felt to both Jaemin and Chenle, they all knew that their friendship existed only in limbo, until Jaemin found someone he liked better. That’s just the way it was -- if you had to depend on someone, it could only be one. It could only be your Twin.

Aside from the fact that none of them had been officially assigned a Twin, it was more common that you found them yourself as a student. Jeno and Chenle had become entangled in each other’s existence from their first steps inside the massive iron gate. Donghyuck and Renjun, too, did not need telling that they were connected. They had even modified their own appearances to resemble each other, tugging at the reigns The Wolf had on them, going a step ahead. 

Suddenly, Jeno understood. This was not a mission to prove themselves. Jaemin had seen something he wanted. And he was going to get it.

“Jeno, Chenle, Renjun in one group. Donghyuck, Jisung, and me in the other,” Jaemin said.

Renjun frowned. “No.”

Donghyuck covered Renjun’s arm with his hand, grasping his wrist. Jeno hadn’t seen the boy reach for his knives, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t happened. Donghyuck would be far more accustomed to the telltale twitches of his friend than anyone.

Jaemin blinked at him, as if surprised, as if he hadn’t seen this coming at all. “You and Donghyuck have seniority over the rest of us. I’ll trust your decision, but it’d be more beneficial to our job to have your skills on both teams, not just one. But it’s up to you.”

Renjun glanced at Donghyuck. They held each other’s gaze for a long moment before Donghyuck nodded, the tilt of his chin minute. “Good idea, Jaemin.”

If Jeno were in Jaemin’s position, he would have been set alight by the look Renjun shot him, but Jaemin simply looked pleased. “I thought you’d agree. We’ll go around the Temple to wait, you boys cut through the market.”

Renjun’s jaw was set as Donghyuck started to step away. Before he could go farther than a few steps, Renjun’s hand shot out and he grabbed him. Donghyuck looked back at him.

“Don’t be stupid,” Renjun said.

“Don’t kill anyone you’re not supposed to,” Donghyuck murmured. He covered Renjun’s hand with his own and glanced at Jeno and Chenle. He tipped his head closer to Renjun’s ear, keeping his eyes trained on Jeno. Jeno felt his spine straighten under his attention. He rolled his shoulders back, suddenly itching with the desire to straighten his robes. He could see Donghyuck’s lips part and move, but couldn’t hear his words over the sound of the street. Whatever he said made Renjun roll his eyes and jerk his hand back.

“Of course,” Renjun said. He may have tried to sound haughty, but his words grumbled out like a small child.

Their two groups parted without another words passed between them. Jeno squinted at Jaemin’s back as he led his little crew into the crowd.

Chenle whistled, the sharp note drawing Jeno’s attention back to him. “Interesting, isn’t it?”

Jeno nodded toward Renjun. He didn’t want to speak about it in front of him, just in case it stoked his strange temper. But Renjun wasn’t paying attention to them at all, staring into the crowd where Donghyuck had disappeared with near strangers. He clasped his own wrist where Donghyuck tended to hold onto him. 

“Renjun,” Jeno said, quiet. “Should we go?”

Renjun sighed. He pointed at the sky. It was blue and clear -- Jeno was grateful for the wide circular brim of his hat now, shading his face from the sun’s rays. “It’s not even noon. No one will be leaving the Temple soon. A good, faithful man has to spend at least a few hours making his offerings. Wouldn’t you know that? Or does it not apply to you? You’d be on the other side of the sacrifices, after all.”

Jeno chose to ignore the slight. “What do you think we should do then?”

Renjun slid his gaze over them both. “Two well-dressed gentlemen like yourselves… Take a nice stroll through the market.”

“And you?” Chenle asked.

Renjun looked down the street again -- the other three had long disappeared. “I’ll be around. Don’t look for me, I’ll find you.”

He didn’t leave room for argument, turning down the street toward the market. Jeno blinked and he was gone, ducking behind some vendor’s stall or into a narrow alleyway. He wouldn’t have been surprised to see him suddenly creeping over the rooftops. 

“They’re more alike than they’d like,” Chenle murmured, “him and Jaemin.”

Jeno hummed in agreement. Sneaky, both of them. Quiet and venomous. Jeno had not considered being on the other side of Jaemin’s bite before, but standing there, left behind, he had the inkling of the sting it would inflict.

Why had Jaemin asked him along? Just to push Renjun off on someone else. If Jeno had not insisted, neither Chenle nor Jisung would have come with them, and Jeno would have been standing here alone.

Chenle yawned, pushing the brim of his hat up. The sun lit the lower half of his face. He flipped his long sleeves around, smirking a little. “Let’s explore then, shall we? Two gentlemen like us...we can’t just stand around.”

Jeno swallowed his bitter protests. He wasn’t alone, after all. He never would be again. “After you, sir.”

Chenle laughed. “Don’t tease, Jeno. I’ve missed being called that more than you know.”

They walked down the street through the market. Jeno was half-hearted at best as he perused the goods for sale. Chenle, on the other hand, had been lit with excitement that left his gaze darting from stall to stall. He looked like a man approaching the gambling tables, ready to throw his coins at anyone who offered him a good enough hand. Jeno had never had enough money to feel free like that. He supposed that was a certain kind of freedom itself.

“Chenle,” Jeno started, curious, “why did you come to Avimlore?”

Chenle didn’t look as surprised as Jeno would have felt, had someone asked him the same question. Maybe it was inevitable that they would have this conversation, though it had already been months since they’d arrived.

“To Mortecole?” Chenle asked, lowering his voice. “It’s a long story.”

Jeno nodded. When he stayed quiet, Chenle laughed. 

“You’re good at that,” Chenle said, “making people talk.”

“Usually it involves much more discomfort,” Jeno said, only half teasing.

Chenle hummed, pausing at a stall to glance over bolts of detailed fabric, silk embroidered with golden thread. “I’m a second son, you know? Do you have siblings?”

Jeno shook his head.

Chenle moved on. Jeno followed. “I’ve always loved my brother. Looked up to him. That’s what second sons do, isn’t it? Love their brothers.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“As you always should.” Chenle shot him half a smile, poking his tongue out at him briefly. Jeno couldn’t resist pushing him, but Chenle only played to stumble. What a sight they must be, two young scholars strolling through the market with such childish behavior. 

“Why did loving your brother bring you here?” Jeno pressed.

Chenle sighed. “My brother had an attempt on his life. Someone snuck into his bedroom at night and tried to strangle him. He survived, but he couldn’t remember their face. A pity, isn’t it? They can’t be caught.”

Jeno’s heart skipped in his chest. He eyed Chenle’s face, the careful way he observed the street around them, the strange seriousness that settled around his eyes like deep lines he was far too young to have. 

“It’s a shame,” Jeno agreed, quiet.

Chenle nodded. “My invitation arrived not long after. My father thought it might be best if his only two sons were separated. One assassination attempt is enough.”

“And your mother?”

Chenle smiled again. “I have no idea. I’m a bastard, you see. The bastard second son.”

Jeno’s mouth was dry. It had little to do with the heat. He couldn’t keep his eyes on Chenle’s face anymore, shifting his gaze down to their feet, their light footsteps in the dirty street. “Well, he was right. You’ll be safe here.”

“And with me here, he’ll be safe, too,” Chenle murmured.

Jeno didn’t know what to say -- but he didn’t have to say anything. Chenle suddenly pulled him to a halt in front of a vendor and clapped his hands together in glee.

The stall was covered in a deep red cloth with scalloped edges, like a poor imitation of delicate lace. Carvings covered the table in rows. It took a moment to realize what had caught Chenle’s eye, but then the carvings became more recognizable, their faces shifting under Jeno’s eyes like magic.

Jeno blinked down at his mother’s gods laid out on display. How strange. To think this was how they might have felt, looking down at all the miserable earth and its delicate humans. 

Chenle’s fingers danced over the fine wooden carvings, dipping his fingertips into their crevices. He plucked one up from the table and held it beside Jeno’s face, squinting at him first, then the carving, and back again. 

“You do bear a family resemblance,” he said finally. 

Jeno frowned as Chenle turned the pendant so he could see its face. His mother’s moon god looked back at him, in a deep cherry wood he would’ve rarely seen on the island. The scarcity would have made it expensive. As beautiful as it was, it looked to Jeno like a cursed thing he would have passed on to someone else as soon as possible. 

“I don’t see it,” Jeno said. 

Chenle was already pulling a few coins from his pocket, pressing them into the merchant’s palm. 

Jeno frowned. “I thought you weren’t religious.”

Chenle grinned as he tucked the carving away from Jeno’s sight. “I’m not. But I’ve been told I’m sentimental.”

“Do you get attached to trinkets every time you go to the market?”

“Only the handsome ones,” Chenle said, humming under his breath as he steered Jeno down the street again. “Do you hate the religious?”

“Only the faithful ones,” Jeno said.

Chenle grinned, showing all his teeth. They continued down the street, stopping once to watch a puppet show surrounded by small children and then again to eye a scuffle breaking out in front of a dim inn. 

“And why did you come to Avimlore?” Chenle asked as they watched a man get thrown onto his ass in the dust.

Jeno glanced up at the cloudless sky, where the sun drew lines of hazy heat through the air. It would be some time before the moon was visible, but it was always there, wasn’t it? The night was always there, just hidden behind the shine of day. 

“I came because I was invited,” Jeno answered.

He knew that didn’t answer Chenle’s question. Just as Jeno had intended when he’d asked Chenle, the question meant: _What have you done to deserve this place?_ But what hadn’t he done? And what wouldn’t he do?

Jeno didn’t yet have the voice for those answers.

The smell of dough and red bean pulled Jeno from his thoughts. “Steamed bun?” Chenle asked. He was already fishing out coins again.

Jeno’s stomach growled. They hadn’t eaten before they left, but he doubted the money they’d been given was for this purpose – already Chenle had spent some on a silly figurine.

“Maybe we should wait until we find the others.”

“Even if we’re fast, we’re going to be out all day,” Chenle said, shaking his head. “Maybe all night.”

The idea made Jeno’s stomach churn. He hadn’t ever slept anywhere but his home on the island and inside the walls of Mortecole. The thought of laying his head to rest and closing his eyes, leaving himself vulnerable in an unknown place, was disquieting. But he wouldn’t live at Mortecole forever. Someday, he would have to step through the iron gate. Not even the Twins that trained them stayed in their position forever – it was a temporary post, between assignments. There was no telling how far he would go if he lived to gain his partner and his pin.

Chenle had decided not to wait for his decision any longer. He moved to exchange a few coins for food. He didn’t make it far. Renjun’s shaved head popped up behind the cart. He gave them each a displeased look before circling around it.

“Let’s go,” Renjun said. He slapped Chenle’s wrist and the coins in his palm popped up. Renjun swiped them from the air. They disappeared into his own pocket.

“Hey!” The vendor called after him.

Renjun bore him no mind. Jeno sighed. There wasn’t much of a choice. He would have to forget he was hungry. He nodded at Chenle, and they followed the boy with the knives through the streets

✵✵✵✵✵✵✵

The ramshackle shops and inns gave way to homes. Their group of three slipped through narrow alleyways, across the streets of squat houses pressed close together. Eventually they gave way to sprawling residences with fenced in yards.

Jeno ducked under a laundry line, narrowly avoiding getting thwacked in the face by damp trousers as Renjun snapped the line behind him. It took a great deal of effort some moments to remember that Renjun had sharp, pointy objects hidden in all the shifts of his clothes and that Jeno’s temper could get him in trouble – more specifically, it could get him gutted.

Renjun stopped behind some building that was humble enough to be the servant’s quarters of the nearest family compound. It was nicer still than Jeno’s childhood home.

“Up,” Renjun said.

Jeno eyed the cobbled corner of the building. It wasn't too tall and would be far easier to climb than Mortecole’s coastal cliff face. “Is the temple close?”

Renjun nodded over his shoulder. The spires of the temple rose from the rooftops of family estates, its ivory colored dome the counterpart to Mortecole’s imposing darkness on the other side of the city.

“The roof will give us an advantage,” Renjun said.

Jeno glanced up and down the alleyway. They were alone, but there was no way to predict when a servant bustling with food or laundry or children might cross their path. “Are you expecting a fight, so soon?”

“Shouldn’t we always?”

Chenle’s face pinched. “We’re the ones bringing justice to a wrong. It should be him who’s concerned about getting cornered.”

“These streets are too narrow,” Renjun argued, “it’s an easy place to get cornered.”

“We’re the ones doing the cornering!”

Chenle was stalling. Heights made him sick. Jeno held his hand up between them. They paused.

“I’ll go up to see if there’s anything we should be aware of,” Jeno said. “Are you capable of staying out of trouble?”

“Is that a joke?” Chenle asked flatly.

Jeno fit his toe into the highest niche on the corner of the wall. He reached as he propelled himself upward and latched onto another groove with his fingertips. He felt their eyes on him as his climbed, but focused on little else but the feeling of the stones under his hands. The journey to the roof was short. He caught his breath in two cycles in and out, and steadied himself on the low slant of the rooftop. It wasn’t very high and his vision to the temple courtyards was still obstructed, but the city streets opened up to him like he was looking down at a map. Or sideways at a map, at least.

He scanned the streets for signs of anything suspicious. If their mark had more than a few bodyguards, it would be difficult to get close enough. But he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

He slipped back down to his group. Chenle had crossed his arms over his chest and was glaring at Renjun, whose face was the picture of innocence. That in itself was more unsettling than anything Jeno could have spied from his perch.

“What happened?”

“Nothing,” Chenle bit out. “See anything?”

Jeno shook his head and unwrapped his long sleeves from where he’d twisted them around his forearm. “Nobody stands out. We should go the courtyard and wait there.”

Renjun turned on his heel, leading the way again. As he followed, Jeno tried to recall the images of the maps they’d studied over the past few months, but all he could see of the city was the major landmarks – the Temple, Mortecole, the Courts. If he was left on his own, maneuvering the city streets would take a lot more effort and he would certainly be lost. For Renjun, it looked easy, a street rat himself.

So many students came to Mortecole from across the world that Jeno had not considered an invitation being sent to someone in Mortecole’s backyard. But Avimlore was full of the stuff that would make a killer, trained or otherwise. How special Renjun must be, to slip inside those walls with all his sharp edges, and still be alive.

The Temple courtyards were green and far too small in proportion to the massive dome. The nobles’ homes that they had woven through encroached on the foundation of the Temple like roaches, imposing on the tranquil gardens leading to the wide front door.

Jeno eyed the three priests that clustered by the doors. The presence of holy men was expected, but never something Jeno welcomed. He tilted the brim of his hat down over his face, hoping it would mask his features in shadow.

He heard Renjun’s relief before he spotted the other boys. Renjun exhales in a fluttery rush and slipped from their side, taking steps double his usual pace to Donghyuck. Jeno focused on their feet, on the toes of their boots only a centimeter apart as they came close to each other.

“I have great expectations for the bonding you lot should have done,” Jaemin murmured, stopping beside Jeno.

“You should lower them,” Jeno replied. He found he could not look away from Renjun and Donghyuck – or, perhaps, he just could not look at Jaemin. “Is he inside already?”

Jisung nodded. “We spotted his horse and followed him. But when he got here, he had already gone inside.”

“No trouble so far?” Chenle asked. Jisung shook his head.

Jeno licked his lips as he surveyed the area. It was too open. He felt exposed, stripped bare of this costume Jaemin had dressed them all in. He hated this place. He wished he hadn’t let Jaemin convince him to come.

“Are there any other doors?” He asked.

“We didn’t look,” Jisung answered.

Jeno shot them both a thinly veiled glare. “What were you doing just standing here? Waiting for him to fall into your laps? Spread out and look for any other exits – if he knows his name is in someone’s ledger, he won’t go anywhere without an escape plan.”

He looked to Chenle, but Chenle picked up on his tone without him having to say it. Jeno stamped down the feeling flooding his chest when Chenle nodded and said, “You go right, I’ll go left.”

 _In a city full of fools,_ Jeno wanted to say, _you’re the only one who makes sense._

Jeno nodded instead. It wasn’t his job to direct the rest of them. If they were any use to the order, they would sort it out themselves. He focused instead on keeping his face tilted away from the holy men stationed at the front door, and slipping around the edge of the courtyard unseen.

Footsteps followed him. He gritted his teeth to hold back the words he wanted to whip at Jaemin. It had dawned on him that there was little point in this day besides Jaemin’s own satisfaction, his barbed ambition. Jeno had been a fool to think that Jaemin would consider him in any other way than a stepping stool to success.

There – a window on the lower level. It wasn’t of an intricate design, but would someone go so far as to break a Temple window in order to flee? It would depend on what would be chasing them.

“Would you use the window?”

Jeno whipped around. Donghyuck looked back from three steps behind him.

“No,” Jeno said, “I wouldn’t use the window. Unless I was being followed by someone like me.”

A ghost of a smile crossed Donghyuck’s lips and slipped away again. He glanced back at the window. “Most men aren’t brave enough to risk being hurt.”

“Most men aren’t foolish enough to be cornered by someone trying to kill them.”

“Killing,” Donghyuck mused. “Is that our mission today?”

“We’ll see,” Jeno said. “What are you doing?”

“You told us to spread out,” Donghyuck murmured. “I’m following your instructions.”

Jeno glanced over Donghyuck’s shoulder. There was no sign of Renjun or Jaemin. “Alone.”

“They went the other way,” Donghyuck explained. “I’m not fond of letting an explosive out of my sight.”

Jeno paused and blinked, trying to clear the veil of anger that shrouded his vision. Donghyuck waited only a few seconds, passing his eyes over him, before he stepped forward and past him.

“We need to move a little faster if we’re going to catch the man, Jeno,” Donghyuck said. He was right, though Jeno did not want to tell him so. He bit down on his tongue instead and matched his pace to Donghyuck’s, returning his focus to the building.

✵✵✵✵✵✵✵

The sun slipped across the sky, leaving hazy waves of heat in its path. In the shade of the stables adjacent to the Temple, Jeno squatted. He watched the door hidden under a detailed arch until his eyes burned, blinked, and set his focus again.

Once they’d found all the possible exits, they’d stationed themselves outside them. Jeno would have been relieved to find Chenle beside him, but he still didn’t trust the others to follow through. Neither, it seemed, did Chenle. Without having to discuss it, they split off again. Donghyuck followed him once more.

Now, Donghyuck leaned against the wide wooden slats of the wall behind him. He dragged his toe through the dirt, leaving a deeper trench everytime his foot passed over the same arching line.

They hadn’t eaten since the night before. Jeno felt his hunger claw at him like a caged beast. It wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling.

 _Devil eyes, evil boy._ Even in the thick heat of Avimlore’s late afternoon, Jeno felt the ocean breeze on his skin. When his tongue darted out to wet his lips, it was all salt. After the ocean took his mother, Jeno hadn’t eaten for three days, locked in the house while his father grieved in the mountains. It was a lesson in survival. And a punishment for existing. Brine coated his teeth.

Jeno spit in the dirt.

“I’m not familiar with all kinds of worship,” Donghyuck murmured, roused from his own daydreams. “Does it usually take so long?”

“A sacrifice can take all day,” Jeno muttered through his locked jaw.

Donghyuck sighed. “If only there was a way to smoke him out.”

Jeno glanced sideways at him. Donghyuck scoffed.

“Stop it,” Donghyuck said. “Not literally.”

Abruptly, Jeno stood. His limbs ached from the prolonged position of sitting, his joints screamed as he stretched them, but he had felt worse pain than that.

“What?” Donghyuck asked.

“I’m tired of waiting. This needs to end now.” Jeno jerked backwards before he could take two steps. He looked down at the hand on his arm, brows raised, and then it its owner. Donghyuck gave him a hard look, his face etched with indignation. “We are not going to threaten a praying man.”

“No,” Jeno agreed, “we’re going to interrupt him to set the balance right.”

“What do you know about balance?” Donghyuck scoffed, his grip tightening. “I refuse to hurt someone in a sacred place. It’s not right. That isn’t part of justice.”

“Isn’t that for him to decide?”

Donghyuck didn’t let go. He knew who Jeno meant – The Wolf. They answered to The Wolf.

“Whatever values you’re still clinging to, you need to let go of them,” Jeno snapped. The longer they hesitated here, the more chance there was that they would lose their mark.

Donghyuck wasn’t budging. His jaw set, he dug his fingers into Jeno’s arm. “We wait until he leaves.”

Jeno wasn't willing to risk his life to find out how far Donghyuck would carry his morals.

“All night?” Jeno snapped, just to be obstinate.

Donghyuck nodded. “If that’s how long it takes.”

Jeno bit down on the inside of his cheeks, already tender from hours of impatient fidgeting. “Whatever you say, your Highness.”

He didn’t miss how Donghyuck’s eyes flashed in the dimming light of the day, golden where they should have been brown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey friends :) let me know what you think!!! <3
> 
> [twt](https://twitter.com/jpseudy)  
> [cc](https://curiouscat.me/jpseudy)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i added a tag for implied sexual content, please heed the tags as this story continues! i'll be adding more when necessary.

Compared to the inns they had passed in the market, this one could have been a palace. Leading the group in their expensive robes, Chenle paid for two rooms. They could’ve made do with one but it would have brought too much suspicion for all six of them to shuffle in together. As the sun dipped below the city walls, the streets came alive -- workers going home, food cart owners calling out their prices, children weaving underfoot. There was no chance to reach the trader unnoticed. So they’d followed him from the temple through the suddenly crowded streets and to the inn.

Downstairs, the inn functioned as a tavern. Travelers and locals hunched over ale and rice wine, trading tales in their time off from trading wares. 

“We should wait a while, in case his men saw us in the street,” Donghyuck said. There was no argument. Besides, even if they wanted to rush the stairs and drag him out, the allure of food was too strong. Jeno’s stomach rumbled painfully enough that he had to suppress a grimace.

Chenle clapped a hand to his shoulder. “See, you should always listen to me. Maybe if you hadn’t hesitated this afternoon…”

For a moment, Jeno fantasized about knocking him on the back of his head. But that would draw more attention than they already were, lurking around the entrance. 

“Let’s get something to share,” Jaemin said decisively. He offered Jeno a smile, one of his most charming, but all Jeno could see was the mask of something beautiful, sinister where he had been lovely. Jeno still felt as if he had been walking around blindfolded these past few months. Now, as he started to see Jaemin’s ambition as it really was, every step felt unsteady. When would Jaemin rip the ground from under him completely?

“Food in Yeolijn is so heavy,” Jisung commented, eyes on the table nearest them. He drew his upper lip, nose scrunching. 

“Yet I’ve never seen you without a clean plate,” Chenle said. He took Jisung by the arm, guiding him toward a table in the back corner. It had just been vacated, some dirty dishes still piled along the edge, but it was close to the fireplace and would be comfortable, away from curious ears and wandering eyes.

Jeno followed them, Jaemin falling into step beside him in the short distance across the room. “Have you noticed how he looks at you?” Jeno asked under his breath, glancing sideways at him.

Jaemin hummed. “Who? All the eyes in the room are on me, Jeno.”

Jeno could not say it was a lie. Despite his common clothes, Jaemin drew attention. So, too, did Donghyuck. Jeno’s attention drifted back to him as they took their seats.

Donghyuck peered around the room, his shoulders caved. Jeno had never seen him shy. Maybe he just didn’t like unfamiliar crowds.

Renjun stopped the server on her way past, presumably ordering something for the table. Then, he took his seat next to Donghyuck. Jeno’s interest piqued. It was a slight movement, the vaguest of tells that would not have drawn his attention had he not already been looking. Renjun’s attentive gaze dropped into half-lidded exhaustion. He rested his elbow on the table, sucking his lips between his teeth. Even tired, he looked back toward the door, as if it were the gates of hell and he was waiting for his worst nightmare.

“Were you born in Avimlore?” Jeno heard himself ask.

Renjun was surprised. Jeno felt a little smug. Clearly he had not expected Jeno to notice the ease with which he wove through the city streets, how he knew just the right turns to take.

“Yes,” Renjun said. “Were you born on land or in the arms of the pantheon?”

“Not even funny,” Chenle sighed. “Try harder.”

“Alright,” Renjun said, “what’s funnier about him?”

“He drools in his sleep, he’s awful at studying,” Chenle started, ticking off the list on his fingers, “he daydreams like a child--”

“Enough,” Jeno said, “I don’t daydream.”

“That’s sweet,” Renjun said, disregarding him entirely, “what about? All the fair maidens you might rescue once you’re finished with your training?”

“Rescuing people sounds boring,” Jisung spoke up, “even princesses.”

“Wouldn’t it be a little exciting though?” Jaemin murmured. “Having someone indebted to you?”

Jisung paused with his lips already parted, mulling it over. Jeno shook his head. 

“No one will ever owe us anything,” Jeno said, “It’s Him who holds the ledger. He’s the creditor.”

“You have a very pessimistic view of the world,” Donghyuck murmured.

Jeno blinked. “It’s not pessimism. It’s the truth.”

They studied each other. Jeno couldn’t pinpoint the expression on Donghyuck’s face, so his thoughts drifted from his not-golden-but-brown eyes to the bridge of his nose, the plush curve of his lips, how they pressed into a grim line when he was thinking. 

“Ah, there’s our man,” Jaemin said.

None of them looked -- it would’ve been too obvious. Their food came moments later, a simple but filling meal spread out on their table. Chenle smiled, thanking their server, ever the proper lordling. 

They tucked into their food, the duty left to Jaemin and Jisung, whose backs were to the wall in the corner of the room, to keep an eye on the whereabouts of their target.

“What’s the easiest way to get him alone?” Donghyuck asked. Jeno understood. Even as he tore into a slice of bread, the mission hung over them like an anchor, waiting to smash their heads in if their focus strayed. It would not bode well for them spend the whole day and night out without success. 

“Chenle,” Jaemin murmured teasingly, “this is where your skills in fan-work would come in handy.”

Chenle choked out a laugh around his mouthful of food. “Not me.”

“We ought to leave it up to a professional, shouldn’t we?” Renjun said. Jeno eyed him, but his face betrayed no ill intentions. For once his voice was even, without the sharpness that lay under his tongue whenever he spoke to Jeno. Maybe he was too tired. Or maybe he was just being honest.

Jaemin pressed his knuckles to his lips as he looked back to their mark, considering his approach. “I can get him up to his room. Then it’s up to the rest of you. There’s nothing more dangerous than a man throwing a fit because he doesn’t get what he wants.”

Jisung frowned. “You’ll go alone?”

Jaemin sighed, raising a hand to rake through his hair. Something flickered in his eyes when his fingers passed over his fuzzy scalp, something mournful. Jeno wondered what it meant to him, to cut his hair when beauty was something he treasured. He wondered if it would feel like cutting off a limb. 

Whatever crossed Jaemin’s mind was brief. He looked at Jeno. “If only you weren’t so miserable in etiquette. Instead being tempting is just my sole burden.”

“Does he really need the manners?” Renjun tsked. 

Jeno glanced between them, growing concerned at the little smile creeping over Chenle’s lips. He squinted at him and Chenle looked away, feigning ignorance. “I wouldn’t be much help. I’m not that sort of charming.”

Renjun laughed. In contrast to his personality, his laugh was sweet and airy. 

“What?” Jeno asked. He could feel himself frowning, knowing his face was contorting into some wicked mask like those that hung on the temple walls. That’s what his mother always said, rubbing her thumbs over the corners of his lips to pull them into a smile again. 

Chenle cleared his throat. Jaemin only smiled. Jisung was unimpressed, turning his attention back to his plate. 

Donghyuck, surprisingly, was the one to take pity on him. “You’re quite handsome, Jeno.”

Jeno waited a beat to see if a laugh would follow. It didn’t. 

Instead, Jaemin stood, wiping his mouth on the back of his wrist. “Some of you should go up to our rooms and wait.”

“How long will it take?” Chenle asked, rubbing his stomach, now full. “Do I have time to take a nap?”

Jisung hid his quiet laugh behind his arm, disguising it with a cough. “I will go upstairs. I can take care of the other men if they are a problem.”

“Don’t make a mess,” Jaemin said. 

Despite his stern words, Jisung smiled. Any attention Jaemin granted him was accepted with pleasure.

“I’ll go up and make sure nothing too gruesome happens,” Chenle sighed. 

“Thank you,” Jaemin murmured.

“You go, too,” Donghyuck told Renjun. 

Renjun squinted down at his plate. His open displeasure put Jeno on edge. The last thing they needed at this moment was a fit. But Renjun merely nodded, standing. The three trailed upstairs without much more to say. 

Jaemin waited until they were gone to leave the table, taking his time to cross the room and make his move. Something changed in the way he held himself, something fluid in his limbs. Jeno watched him as closely as everyone else in the room. Only he was searching for cracks in Jaemin’s armor where everyone else was searching for skin.

“Do you like the city?”

Jeno glanced sideways, surprised that Donghyuck was striking up a conversation. Though, he supposed, they couldn’t sit here silently and stare at Jaemin while he attempted to seduce a stranger.

“It’s my first time seeing it,” Jeno said after he’d regained his tongue. “Other than when I first stepped off the boat, but I was too sick to see my own hands in front of me, much less…” He couldn’t find the words to do justice to the city, all cramped and noisy. It was so loud. Mortecole’s walls must have been made of something special to keep all this noise out. 

“I used to come here when I was younger,” Donghyuck said quietly, his tone drifted down and sideways, thoughtful. “It’s dirtier than I remember.”

“It’s overcrowded.”

“Right. The poor king didn’t know what was going to hit him, did he?”

Jeno snorted. “If anyone’s poor, it’s not the King.”

“What you lack in subtlety, you make up for in effort,” Donghyuck sighed. “I didn’t mean _literally.”_

“Are you a loyalist, then?” 

His question piqued Donghyuck’s interest, pulling his gaze to Jeno’s face finally. “Isn’t everyone?”

"Maybe those who can afford to be," Jeno said. He sighed. "I suppose it's the other way around. It costs to go against the word of the King."

"What would be the point, then?"

Jeno couldn't help but huff out a breath of amusement. "I take it you're from somewhere nice, Donghyuck. Were you raised with a lovely governess and three-course meals?"

"Maybe something like that," Donghyuck murmured.

"Well," Jeno said, "I can't fault you for being honest."

"What was it like for you, then? What makes you doubt the throne?"

Jeno cast him a cursory glance before he re-focused on Jaemin across the room. It seemed like he was making progress, his eyes bright and his smile wide under the dim light. The trader leaned in close to Jaemin as he spoke, his movements loose from drink.

What explanation could Donghyuck want from him? To recount the poverty of his childhood or the way the guards at port would wrinkle their nose as he passed? How he watched the islands overrun with nobles in the summer, left destitute in the harsh winters, offered no assistance after terrible storms that sacked their homes and turned his neighbors out onto the streets. The holiday homes stood grand and protected on top of the mountains while his childhood friends begged for food on the street. It was their home, but injustice haunted them all when the court guests set foot on the sands. 

"I don't think it's wise for a commoner like me to speak on the affairs of His Highness," Jeno said finally. 

Donghyuck sat back. Jeno felt his eyes on his face like hot iron. But he refrained from reacting how Donghyuck might expect him. No matter how much he wanted to argue with Donghyuck over the events of the day, how they could have been back in their dormitories by now, asleep in their beds, something held him back from raising his tone. Was it the assumption of his temper? Or the simple fact that he didn't want to see disappointment on Donghyuck's face? 

There was a rope around his chest, tugging hard, and Jeno wanted to be strong enough to resist. That was the whole point, in the end, being strong enough.

"You've forgotten our place," Donghyuck murmured after several minutes passed. Jeno had begun to assume he would leave the conversation to rest. Instead, Donghyuck leaned forward again, resting his forearms on the table as he brought his face closer to Jeno's, his voice low. "We are no commoners. We're above being reduced to station or status."

Jeno smiled, but his heart was rushed with a chill. "I hope one day that may be true."

Across the room, Jaemin stood, slipping his hand into the crook of the merchant's arm. The man threw some coins down on the table, laughing loud and bawdy. They turned toward the stairs. Jaemin did not look back to them, dedicated to his role. To a fault, Jeno thought.

"It's time," Jeno said, starting to stand. Donghyuck's hand fell to his thigh, forcing him back into his chair.

"Not yet," Donghyuck murmured, "you'll have to trust him."

"Do you?"

Donghyuck hummed. "One day, maybe."

✵✵✵✵✵✵✵

Getting rid of the trader’s guards was a quiet affair, as was relieving the man of his ego -- a few lines drawn across his cheek by Renjun’s knife as Jaemin held his face still. Donghyuck was good with words, threatening the man with what else could be cut away if he did not listen and take heed of his wrongdoings. 

He had betrayed the city in his greed and The Wolf would not allow that. Jeno’s home flitted briefly through his mind. He wondered when justice might come for those who brought death and poverty to the islands. In due time, it must. The Wolf was the hand of justice, and the nobles, too, would be in his ledger.

They left the man in his room, weeping. Jisung, Renjun, and Donghyuck slipped out through the window while Chenle led Jeno and Jaemin out. Jeno bit hard on his tongue at the sudden reluctance to let the other three leave his sight.

They met again just a few streets away, quiet as they started back for the shadowy walls of their home. Even in the midnight blue darkness, Mortecole loomed over the city, its towers distinguishable from the squat houses.

By the time they could see the gate, light had begun to touch the sky once more. Chenle sidled up to Jeno and slowed. Jeno matched his pace.

“It’s funny, you know,” Chenle said.

“What is?”

“The way he looks at you when you’re not paying attention,” Chenle said, “the way you look at him.”

Jeno couldn’t help but laugh. “What are you talking about? Did you hit your head when I wasn’t looking?”

Chenle grinned. “If you weren’t looking it was because you were busy staring at someone else.”

Something light fluttered in Jeno’s chest. He wished it would burn and turn to ash as they stepped through the iron gates. Beautiful things didn’t belong in Mortecole. 

“You deserve something fun, that’s all I’m saying,” Chenle continued. “Don’t hold yourself back because you think it’s impossible. You may be one of the only people here who hasn’t thought about it.”

Jeno had thought about it. He was glad to find he’d disguised it well. “I think you may be misunderstanding him. Didn’t they kill someone and leave his tongue in my bed?”

“No, only one of them.” Chenle shot him a look. “You’re being stubborn, but you’ll see. I always know best.”

“In the affairs of the stomach,” Jeno said. 

Chenle elbowed him, rolling his eyes. “I would believe your judgement, if you told me the same thing.”

Jeno raises a hand to finger the knotted cord holding his hat under his chin. “I believe you.”

“Good,” Chenle said, his voice warm with his victory.

But what to do with the believing? 

Jeno found Donghyuck several paces ahead of them. He had stopped in the inner courtyard, his hand on his waist over his wound. He had turned sideways, his eyes on Jeno and Chenle as they approached. Jeno’s ears burned. He averted his gaze, uncertain, out of step.

✵✵✵✵✵✵✵

Without sleep, the day was grueling. They delivered their report to the Twins who had seen them off, and were sent to their lessons. Luckily for some, they missed the morning drills, but unluckily for Jeno they were in time to meet with their tutors. He spent the day dozing over dusty tomes, ink splotching off the end of his reed pen onto his paper until his plains language tutor snatched it up and thwacked him over the head with it. 

The air felt heavier that day. He could not pinpoint the sour taste in his mouth, the effort it took to draw a breath, but he silently watched his friends joke with each other, held back by the knowledge that something was coming. He was right, in the end.

Renjun was called away first. Jeno watched him leave their evening meal, his mouth dry. Everything he put in his mouth tasted like sand, like his face pushed into the beach as it shifted beneath him, a hand in his hair and a split lip, the salt of the sea burning in his eyes. He blinked it away. 

A hand landed on his shoulder. A cloaked Twin looked down at him, their counterpart standing at the end of the table. Why did he need an escort? There was nowhere to run. Jeno stood without looking back at Chenle and kept his eyes ahead of him.

The room was dim, lit only by the massive fireplace opposite the door and the moon shining through the narrow slatted windows. Jeno stepped onto the blue carpet, following it to the grand table, all dark wood and golden accents. On the other side, He sat.

The Wolf was elusive. He rarely showed His face -- Jeno had heard whispers that the sight elicited terror, that He only showed it to His targets, and that no one who had seen it had survived. Jeno had seen glimpses, of course, as they all had, on the night of his first trial, when Peter’s blood bought his stay.

Although He was a massive man with wide, bulky shoulders, He moved silently, a ghost. He was the apex predator. But lounging back in His seat, fingers steepled in front of His chin, gently angled face pensive and searching, The Wolf looked like any other man. 

Maybe that was the bigger secret. The best killer in the world, the gavel of justice, could be lost in the crowd.

It did little to ease the tightness in Jeno’s chest. The tips of his fingers went numb and trembled. He shifted his shoulders back, tilted his chin higher, and resolved to look Death in the eye, no matter the result.

“Jeno,” The Wolf said, His voice deep and warm. “It’s good to see you return unharmed.”

“Thank you,” Jeno managed, his tongue feeling thick and clumsy, “sir.”

“Would you like to sit?”

There were no other chairs in the room. It seemed more foolish to point this out than it had been from Him to offer it to Jeno. “No.”

A deep breath. The crackling fire. Clouds drifted across the sky, blotting out the light of the moon, and the room grew darker. 

“When I heard about the students leaving on a mission, I did not expect six to leave,” The Wolf continued. 

Jeno waited, pressing his tongue against the inside of his teeth. He bit back the urge to defend Jaemin’s choice. It had, truthfully, been Jeno who had pushed for the extra two to go. But what other option did he have? He could not have let Jaemin leave without him, nor could he have left Chenle alone in Mortecole.

“What do you think about that?” The Wolf pressed.

“It was the responsible decision,” Jeno said. “I am not certain that we would have been successful without the help of everyone.”

“You have not progressed enough in your training to handle one man?” The Wolf tsked. “That’s disappointing.

“No, of course not,” Jeno rushed to answer. “The one man -- of course, any one of us could have handled that. But--”

“But?”

Jeno licked his lips. He could hear his heart in his ears, though it seemed to leap into his throat and prevent words from coming out. He had faced death before, but this felt different. Here, it was up to him. “Truthfully…”

The Wolf indulged him with a faint smile, nodding to prompt him further.

“Truthfully, sir,” Jeno said, “I only intended to keep my word.”

“What word is that?” The Wolf murmured.

“I told Jaemin he could trust me,” Jeno said. He held his voice steady, though his fingers shook where he’d clasped them behind his back. “I told Chenle I was his.”

The Wolf surveyed him silently. Panic had already begun curling its icy fingers around Jeno’s heart and he continued, unabated, “I could not break my word, though it seems...foolish now, to have left Mortecole in such a large group. I understand whatever punishment you feel is necessary.”

The sound of The Wolf’s chuckle reverberated in Jeno’s head. “You think I am cruel, don’t you?”

“Not cruel,” Jeno said, “but just.”

Jeno steeled himself as The Wolf leaned forward in His seat. There were only a few feet between them, able to be crossed easily in seconds, and Jeno -- for all his bravado -- was not fond of pain.

“I would like to be assured that you are capable students.”

A pause. Jeno swallowed hard. “How?”

“I’ve entrusted another mission to our Renjun,” The Wolf said after a few moments passed, each second burying itself deeper in Jeno’s body. “If he can reach his target without being noticed, then I will allow him to continue his training.”

“And me?” Jeno asked.

“I would like the same from you,” The Wolf murmured. “I’ve heard you’re skilled -- I’d like to see how far you’ll go to complete a job.”

Jeno’s ears burned with the implication. It wasn’t his reluctance that had cost them precious time on the city streets, but his allowance for Donghyuck to dictate how drastic their hunt would be. If he had gone into the temple, he may not have been standing here, a mark of shame on the prestige of his invitation to Mortecole. “Sir,” Jeno started, “what is the mission?”

The Wolf turned His face toward the window. As the moonlight escaped the inky clouds, shining through the narrow slats again, they lit His eyes -- twin flames, red and un-human like. Jeno had heard those rumors, too, but had turned from them with a sour taste in his mouth. He, too, had heard his name and _beast_ intertwined. 

“You know your target--” Jeno’s mouth was dry. “Our talented Donghyuck.” _Donghyuck, Donghyuck, you fool._ “It’s a shame, but it’s your choice.”

What kind of choice was that, in the end? Him or Donghyuck?

“Your chances are not the only ones on the table, however,” The Wolf continued. “Renjun has his mark, too.”

“Who?” Jeno asked before he could stop himself. His pulse was mad, thumping in his head, his vision pulsing. He knew. He didn’t need divinity to know, just his common sense, the mirror in front of his eyes.

“Our young Chenle.”

Jeno felt as if he’d stepped into a furnace. He stilled, eyes stuck on the figure in front of him.

“Don’t think too hard on it, Jeno,” The Wolf said kindly, “if you are the better, nothing bad will happen. If you are not, it’s just what is fair.”

Jeno bowed before he took his leave, though he would not be able to remember how he ended up inside the dormitories after. 

_You cannot say a word. You cannot be seen by anyone. I must see his blood before the mark is removed._ The Wolf’s voice seeped into his brain, his words repeating until the sounds lost meaning. 

He could hear his footsteps, but lost count of them, his vision swaying like the sea. His eyes sought out Chenle, found him kneeling beside Jaemin’s bed as they spoke, heads bowed together in quiet discussion. He was there, alive, and Jeno intended to keep it that way.

“You look pale,” Jaemin said when Jeno stopped at the foot of his bed.

“Tired,” Jeno said once he managed to get his tongue to work. He knelt beside Chenle, tipping his forehead down against the edge of Jaemin’s cot. 

“What a baby,” Chenle chuckled, but -- fingers in his hair, rubbing over his neck, his scalp, the hand on his arm, grip tight and grounding. He felt safe and uneasy. A spark lit inside him. There was the boy, the mark, and blood -- all he could taste was blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whew, let's talk about that!!
> 
> [twt](https://twitter.com/jpseudy)  
> [cc](https://curiouscat.me/jpseudy)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> forewarning for content ? there are some sexual conversations in this chapter, but there is no actual sexual content. yet? is it getting warm in here? i tag for everything as i go but the rating is explicit so :)
> 
> that said, the first scene before the first divider i think may have the potential to upset someone out there so if you are someone who looks for content warnings, i'll leave a summary of the scene in the endnote for you to decide for yourself*

Jeno could not close his eyes, even as the breath around him dropped out into slow waves, the tide coming in and drawing out, filling the room with the sound of life. Sleep gnawed at his fingertips, his toes, slipping its hand around the nape of his neck and whispering sweet nothings into his ears. It had been nearly 36 hours since he had slept. When sleep hooked into his eyelids and blurred his vision, he sat up and faced the room with his arms crossed. 

Jeno knew from what had happened to the other boy that Renjun liked to move at night. He kept his eyes fixed on Chenle’s cot until he could see the rise and fall of his chest, then shifted his attention to the far side of the room. 

Nothing -- no sign of movement, not yet.

_ You cannot say a word. You cannot be seen by anyone. I must see his blood before the mark is removed. _

Jeno was a coward. He knew already that he was on the defensive. Unlike many of the students at Mortecole, Jeno’s invitation had not been bought by death.

He lied, certainly, and he fought. He beat his fists into flesh until it gave way to him. His youth had always let his temper take over, but just wanted fairness. He had falsely assumed that was his similarity with his peers. But it seemed as though it was his biggest difference.

And, maybe, that was what would prove him the better. Eventually. Now, he was forced to shake himself, his eyes burning. 

How much longer could he wait? How long would this draw on?

Jeno shifted out of his bed. The floor was cool under the soles of his feet. He stepped between the rows of beds, biting his lip, and crossed to the far side of the room. 

Donghyuck slept on his side, his cheek pressed into his arm, and held his fist to his lips.

Jeno counted his fingers -- five, as expected -- but for a moment he could have believed he was sucking his thumb like a small child. He looked like a small child, his face relaxed and open, giving himself up to vulnerability in his sleep. 

Jeno didn’t have a weapon. He could strangle him, but he might wake up. Everyone else would wake up too if they heard Donghyuck make a shout.

Jeno tested the bed, leaning one knee onto the edge and slowly putting weight down on it. 

Donghyuck sighed in his sleep, shifting onto his back, and Jeno stilled, his heart in his throat. When Donghyuck settled, Jeno slung his other leg over him, straddling his waist. His heart was beating loud enough that Jeno was sure everyone in the room could hear it. He could smother him, yes, that would be quieter, and Jeno was strong enough to hold Donghyuck down. 

Jeno held his breath, reaching down to grip the corners of Donghyuck’s pillow. He could be careful, he could be gentle and quiet, it wouldn’t disturb him too much, and wasn’t it better to go this way than gutted by some random king’s guard a few years down the line? 

Jeno’s eyes stung with something worse than exhaustion. They ached -- his chest, too. He slipped his hand under Donghyuck’s head, lifting it to ease the pillow out from under him. Donghyuck’s skin was warm under his hand. 

_ I must see his blood.  _

Would this pass the test? It was an easy death. Not messy, no evidence of a murder, just the passing in the night, as easy as the clouds slipped through the sky. There would be no blood. This was not the way forward.

He couldn’t keep his eyes off Donghyuck’s face, the fan of his eyelashes, his lips parting slightly to exhale, his golden eyes, glossy in the moon-lit darkness.

Donghyuck was awake.

Jeno swallowed hard, faltering. He expected Donghyuck to throw him off, but the shove didn’t come. Instead, Donghyuck’s hand lifted to Jeno’s face, his fingertips tracing the line of his jaw, dipping down his throat. He pressed his fingers into the hollow at the center of Jeno’s collarbone, feeling, waiting. His heartbeat, fast as a bird under Donghyuck’s touch.

“I’m dreaming,” Donghyuck breathed.

And his eyes -- golden, so clearly rich and molten metal. Jeno couldn’t believe he had ever thought they were brown. His head was swimming. 

Was this a dream, too? Was it all? Perhaps he would wake and realize that there was no test, no wound at the end of the line, no reason to believe Donghyuck could set his pulse so fast.

Jeno let go of the pillow, letting Donghyuck’s head fall back down onto its comfort. Curling his fingers around Donghyuck’s wrist, he pulled his hand away and placed Donghyuck’s arm over his chest again. 

Donghyuck’s eyes fell closed and he was gone again, lost to his real dreams while Jeno was left to face the night.

Jeno shifted off him, gripping the edge of the bed so he wouldn’t fall on his face. He sucked in deep breaths, trying to clear his dizzy head. 

When he turned, he noticed another pair of eyes on him, a cold stare that sunk into his bones.

Renjun sat up in his bed, his body rigid. Jeno couldn’t make out his features in the dark, but he didn’t have to. He had encountered Renjun’s strange temper enough to know he was thinking of the exact way he would cut Jeno into pieces, which body part to start with. But it wouldn’t be tonight. Jeno hoped that fairness would rule tonight as he slumped back to his end of the room. Donghyuck was alive. Chenle would be alive, too, when the sun rose.

Jeno had to believe in that, as he sunk into his bed, or he wouldn’t have much to believe in at all.

✵✵✵✵✵✵✵

If Jeno had expected Jaemin to abandon them now, he was mistaken. With as little sleep as he’d gotten, however, he was slow to comprehend that. As he dropped into his seat at the table he found Jaemin already in his usual place beside him.

"Hard to get out of bed this morning?" Jaemin asked.

It had been hard to get into bed in the first place. Leaving it had been a battle between Jeno's survival instincts. But when the battle was his internal physical needs or risking Chenle’s safety, it was an easy choice. He grunted his confirmation

Jaemin surveyed him. Jeno’s skin prickled at the attention but he was focused on food and passing a glance up and down the table. He wasn't sure what he expected -- Renjun wouldn't show up here, either, not to do something stupid.

"You know," Jaemin said, "there's a parade every year in Aurelos."

"I'm sure you have lots of parades," Jeno grumbled. He caught the bemused expression that crossed Chenle's face at his mood. 

"It's for a festival," Jaemin clarified, although there were probably a lot of those, too, in a country so opulent. "There's a pretty bit of theater involved, too."

Movement in the doorway caught Jeno's attention, a flash of light like reflecting off metal. He jumped, turning his head. But the eyes he expected to find looking back at him weren't there, just the sun bouncing off someone's knife.

"The maiden, so beautiful and revered, kills the spirit of death and replaces her with the spirit of joy," Jaemin says. "Joy is meant to look very common, you see." He paused, swiping his tongue over his knuckle and lapping up a drop of honey that dripped from the bread in his hand, poised close to his mouth. It must have been exhausting, talking so much that you couldn't even eat. "Death is grimy, decrepit, all bones."

Jeno's head was too fuzzy today to play along. He ignored him.

"Who looks most like the maiden, then?" Chenle filled in for him. “Me?”

Jaemin was unrelenting. He grinned. "You would like that. Obviously I'm the maiden."

"Obviously," Jeno mumbled. He shoveled another bite into his mouth before Jaemin could jostle another word out of him.

"What do you think about Jeno?" Jaemin asked Chenle.

Chenle hummed thoughtfully. "Well. He looks like shit, so I'm guessing he's the spirit of death."

"It's fitting," Jaemin murmured.

Jeno chewed so hard he ended up biting his tongue. He shoved his plate back. His head was throbbing already and he'd only been up a few minutes, not even an hour. Everything was too bright, too loud, especially Jaemin, whose sweet tone was as sickly as poison on the back of his tongue.

"Good gods," Jaemin sighed, giving in first, "what's the matter with you?"

"Why only the good ones?" Jeno asked.

"Would you like me to call on the bad?" Jaemin asked. He waited, but Jeno was without an answer. They both knew he was being petulant, unwavering in his stubborn denial of Jaemin's peace offering. How could there be peace when they hadn't yet started the battle?

"I should've explained it to you," Jaemin murmured. 

The simple confession was enough to draw Jeno's gaze back to him. Under the table, Jaemin pressed his hand over Jeno's knee. "Would you like to talk about it?"

"You don't owe me anything, Jaemin," Jeno said slowly, "I don't need you to pretend like you do."

"Since when do we need to owe each other something to talk?"

"Since I saw who you are," Jeno said. There was a violent rattling in his chest, something coming loose that he had tried to treasure, but it was a weight he couldn't carry on top of everything else. "You really are from the courts, aren't you?"

If it had struck Jaemin, he didn't show it. He kept his hand on Jeno's thigh, unmoved. "You've always known that I am. I never lied to you."

"You never told me the truth, either," Jeno said. 

It was unfair, but it was enough to chip away the final link that drew him into Jaemin's flame. The spark in Jeno was back, growing hotter in his gut. He would burn, too. They couldn't burn together.

Jaemin squinted at him. He removed his hand and leaned back in his seat with his chin held high. He was a boy from the courts, sweet tongued and fanged. He couldn't change that, just how Jeno couldn't change the seawater and moonlight in his own blood. But Jeno could still blame him for it, if it was what would keep them safe.

_ His blood. His blood, the mark. _

Jeno couldn't admit to Jaemin what he would have to do. He knew Jaemin wouldn't let him. But letting Jaemin carry the choice would hurt worse than splintering their trust now. If it was between him and Donghyuck, a friend and Jaemin's ambition, Jeno didn't know which Jaemin would choose. He didn't want to know.

"Are you finished?" Jeno asked, turning to Chenle.

Chenle's face was unreadable. Jeno's stomach twisted with unease as he searched for Chenle's thoughts and found nothing. 

"In a minute," Chenle said. "Do you want to meet me outside?"

It was a dismissal that Jeno was reluctant to accept but helpless to refuse. He gritted his teeth, standing, and nodded. The inner courtyard would still be empty as their peers loitered around their first meal. Maybe Jeno could blow off steam while he waited for Chenle. 

It seemed like a good idea, but the moment Jeno turned the corner and realized Chenle was out of his sight, his chest tightened, only allowing him a few short breaths at a time. He forced himself to walk. He was not on the defensive. He was the lion. He would not become the prey.

✵✵✵✵✵✵✵

Chenle gripped his arm as they walked along the cliffside. From this distance, they couldn't see the drop from but it was enough to know that it was there. 

Chenle put up a good front for their peers and instructors, his face an even and blank pretense of calm, but his hand was tight on Jeno's wrist, his lips pursed in queasy defiance of the bile surely rising in his throat.

"What do you think we're having for dinner tonight?" Jeno asked, unable to resist the chance to jab at him.

Chenle groaned. "The same thing we have almost every night. You're a monster."

The words didn't ring in his ears like they used to. Maybe that meant the training was working. Perhaps Jeno had become stronger. He smiled, kicking a small rock from their path. It skittered to the side and dived over the edge. The rush of the waves below drowned out the possibility of hearing it breach the surface of the sea.

"What do you think about his trousers today?"

Jeno should've expected the parry. Although taken aback, he wasn’t annoyed. "The same as every day."

Donghyuck and Renjun walked a few paces ahead of them, both a coincidence of schedules and Jeno's worst luck. 

The voice in the back of his head said it had little to do with coincidence. He and Renjun could not circle their task forever. Eventually one of them would have to make a move and Jeno's failure the previous night proved that they needed a push.

"So, very highly, then," Chenle murmured. "His boots?"

"We all wear the same thing, have you noticed?" Jeno tsked. "What thoughts could I ever have about his clothes?"

There was a fair amount. The sight of Donghyuck's biceps clung to Jeno's brain, leeching away his ability to think rationally. Opposed to the severe lines of their dark clothes, tightly laced, Donghyuck’s body, the way he moved, had started drawing Jeno’s attention more than he cared to admit.

It was a poorly timed distraction, and a dangerous one, but Jeno’s eyes still lingered on Donghyuck’s thighs as he walked regardless.

"Maybe not the clothes themselves," Chenle murmured as if he could read Jeno’s mind. "What about what's under them?"

Jeno squinted ahead of them. He kept one foot in front of the other, which seemed to be a feat in itself. "Chenle, would it be awful if I sent you over the edge? It doesn't look as far a drop right here."

Chenle clutched at his arm, going green. "Alright. Point made."

"I don't know why you're so insistent on him," Jeno murmured.

"You and him," Chenle corrected, despite his unsteady lean into Jeno's side. Jeno bundled him farther from the edge of the path.

"Me and him," Jeno sighed. "Do I look that miserable?"

"You look pretty miserable," Chenle said. Jeno wasn't sure if it was a joke, so he kept his mouth shut. Chenle continued. "Are you really so upset with Jaemin?"

That was one subject Jeno truly didn't want to broach. "I'd rather we talk more about the other thing."

"You're being stubborn for no reason, I think."

"Really?" Jeno asked. Even to his own ears, the word fell flat. He took a deep breath. "I'm not ignoring your issue with it, but I have my own reasons. Even if you can't see what they are."

"Alright," Chenle murmured. "I'll leave it alone, then. I think you're missing something, though."

Jeno huffed. "So are you.”

Chenle didn't loosen his grip on Jeno's arm at all even as their conversation fell. It wasn't the time for them to argue, if there was an argument growing between them. It didn't feel like it. Jeno was sturdy enough to bear the brunt of whatever tame scoldings Chenle was wont to lay on him, but Chenle, too, knew that Jeno was mostly undeserving of it. There was little Jeno did without reason, little reason at all to stray from the most obvious course.

Though they may have made friends with others, that wasn't the point in their being at Mortecole. Jeno had three purposes at the present. One was to keep Chenle safe, the other was to draw blood, the third to survive. Jaemin's aspirations didn't fit into those categories, so they had to be cut out.

They came up close to Renjun and Donghyuck as the line halted. They would have to stand there a few minutes more while their peers got fitted with ropes and rappelled down the cliff-face.

Renjun turned on his heel to face them, his gaze passing over Chenle quickly before it landed on Jeno's face. "You look like you didn't sleep much last night."

Jeno was unimpressed. For a confrontation, it wasn't as biting as he knew Renjun could manage. "I'm sorry if my face offends you this afternoon."

"It always offends me."

Donghyuck lifted a brow. "Is there something I missed since we returned?"

Renjun turned around again, obstinant in his refusal to answer.

"Is that how you scold him?" Chenle asked.

There was only a fleeting smile shared before Donghyuck turned again. Jeno started to sweat.

By the time they reached the cliff, it felt as if the sun had been cranked up, burning twice as hot as when they'd ventured from their precious walls. For a few minutes, Jeno considered the idea that the study rooms might have been preferable to burning alive while waiting to be thrown off the edge of a cliff. But at least by using his body, Jeno could clear his mind from the issue really at hand. 

_ Blood. The mark. Chenle.  _ It took almost no time to assess the scene there and Jeno relaxed again. Even as he was split up from his nauseated partner, there were too many people around for Renjun to do anything. Again, a crowd of killers eased his mind in a way that an empty room could not.

Renjun, however, kept proving to be unpredictable. "Do you need help with the rope?"

Jeno shook his head. He knew how to tie a knot.

"Are you sure? Let me help." There was nothing kind in Renjun's voice as he grabbed the rope from him. 

Jeno wasn't trying to throw a fit or waste his energy. He raised his arms, allowing Renjun close to loop it around him. He watched as Renjun twisted it with deft fingers, small but callused. When he finished, he stayed.

"This is a terrible knot," Jeno said. His fingers slipped easily into the knot. It came undone under his touch, the whole thing falling to the ground.

"Oops," Renjun said.

Jeno didn't dare kneel in front of Renjun. Maybe Renjun wouldn't be able to win the game if he hurt Chenle in front of others, but getting rid of Jeno was an easy loophole. "Are you trying to kill me?"

"Are you stupid?" Renjun asked. "If you do that again, I will."

"What?" Jeno asked carefully.

Renjun squinted up at him. He wore the open expression of a man unsure if he was being played. Although he was a few inches shorter than Jeno, his stare made him feel like a giant. "Don't touch him again."

So it hadn't been a dream.

And if it wasn't a dream, Jeno had more to reckon with than the fact that Renjun had seen him. He suppressed the sick fluttering feeling in his gut to focus on the boy in front of him, not the boy who was certainly nearby, wondering what they could be talking about. "Do you think it's that easy?"

"I didn't say it was easy," Renjun hissed out, "I said don't touch him. If I see you lurking around again, I'll gut you."

"Please," Jeno murmured. Whether it was a plea or a dismissal, he couldn't say.

Renjun left him to fumble with his rope again. 

Jeno tried to remember the twists and loops the old fisherman used to teach him at the docks, his tiny fingers too small to grip the thick nets. He should have been able to do this with his eyes closed. But he couldn't get his hands to work. 

The rope kept slipping out of his grasp. The air was thick. He was breathing fire and all he could see was gold.

✵✵✵✵✵✵✵

Maybe he really did have god blood.

There was little other explanation for how he could have managed the climb so lightheaded, other than a strange and unexplainable ability to fly. But Chenle assured him with a small smile that he had not grown wings, merely sworn and scraped his hands against jutting rocks the whole way up.

That was a little more believable. Jeno squatted down in the dirt as he waited for the rest of their cohort to finish, holding his hands palm up toward the sky. They were scraped and bloody, skin ripped around his nailbeds. There was desperation and there was madness. He was not sure which fit him better.

He didn't want Donghyuck to come over there. If he did have god blood, then maybe he could have flown, and maybe he would have been able to keep Donghyuck away. But Donghyuck came anyway.

Jeno dropped his hands to his knees, hiding his foolish wounds. "Do you need something?"

Donghyuck shook his head. "Renjun is going down."

Jeno didn't look up when Donghyuck stopped beside him. His figure left a looming shadow over him, providing a little relief from the sun. "You seem like you want something."

"I want many things," Donghyuck said.

Jeno worked his jaw, teeth gritted, silent.

"Are you--" Donghyuck started. He stopped just as soon. 

Jeno looked up.

If he felt confused, Donghyuck looked mystified. Donghyuck's eyes, brown in the day, golden at night, could have made Jeno's lack of faith waver, had it not been for his own experience as the son of nothing and no-one.

"Alright?" Jeno asked.

Donghyuck nodded. Jeno stood. There was something in his face that Jeno couldn't tear his gaze from now that he'd met his eyes, which were only the beginning of Jeno's curiosity. It was just out of reach, hiding behind a thick curtain in Jeno's mind. Hands torn or not, he was prepared to rip the curtain open if the answer didn't come quickly. He didn't have the chance.

“Donghyuck,” Jaemin called. He started toward them in long strides, raising his hand to wave. 

Jeno wasn’t inclined to stand around to chat with Jaemin while he slithered his way into the Donghyuck’s graces. Good or bad. 

He took a step away, but Donghyuck touched his elbow. He didn’t hold him there or ask him to stay. His touch alone rooted him. 

Jeno looked at Donghyuck, quietly glad that he wasn’t looking back. It gave him the opportunity to study his profile, follow the bridge of his nose against the gray-blue sky. 

“I’m glad I caught you,” Jaemin said. He looked it. He smiled warmly, unbothered by Jeno’s unimpressed audience.

“Were you looking for me?” Donghyuck asked.

“Mm. I was hoping you might do me a favor.”

Donghyuck nodded, waiting for him to go on. 

Jaemin continued, “I’ve been struggling with hand to hand combat for a while. I guess I’m not particularly strong up close… but I noticed you’re good in close range. I was hoping you might help me out, give me a few tips?”

Donghyuck barely reacted. He hummed quietly, taking pause from the conversation to look down and adjust the hem of his sleeves. He wiggled his fingers under the tight laces. 

Donghyuck wasn’t thinking at all, just taking his time, letting the day stretch around him as he tested his control over them. Time seemed malleable under Donghyuck’s attention and he wasn’t eager to let go of his grip on their attentiveness. Jeno could see this from his position, allowed to look away from Donghyuck’s face since  _ he  _ wasn’t asking for a favor. 

Jeno struggled not to smile. He had to look away, squinting out at the horizon where the ocean met the sky. 

Donghyuck wasn’t fixing anything with his clothes. He was just running his fingers down the criss-cross of fabric, counting the rows one at a time. 

Jeno started counting, too. 

Jaemin stayed silent, capable of bending to accommodate Donghyuck’s pressure. 

At twenty, Donghyuck spoke again. 

“When?” Donghyuck asked.

“This afternoon, if you’re willing,” Jaemin said, so sweet. Jeno had the fleeting thought of how pretty Jaemin would look, choking on his venomous tongue.

“Sorry,” Donghyuck said. “I’m sparring with Jeno this afternoon.”

Jeno frowned,.He couldn’t help but meet Jaemin’s eyes first -- a reflex in astonishment that he would have to break. There was nothing surprising in Jaemin’s gaze. Just displeasure.

“Besides,” Donghyuck said, “we all know Jeno’s the best hand to hand brawler. You should’ve asked him.”

✵✵✵✵✵✵✵

Donghyuck left no room for argument.

Though his hands were bloodied and his muscles ached, Jeno met Donghyuck in the inner courtyard.

Donghyuck stood alone on the edge of the sparring ring, examining the weapons rack. He only looked up when Jeno stopped beside him.

"Do you like swords?" Donghyuck asked.

"As opposed to..."

"Anything."

Jeno considered the weapons rack, his gaze trailing over the blades. There were a few he was partial to. "I don't know if I care enough about a weapon to like one over the other."

Donghyuck laughed quietly, but it rang in Jeno's ears like a blow to the side of his head. He kept his eyes on the swords, resolute in his determination not to let Donghyuck see how much the sound of his voice could strike through him. 

"I guess that's fair," Donghyuck said, "but I thought half the fun of being a student at Mortecole was getting off on the weight of a sword in your hand."

Jeno huffed out a breath of his own amusement. "Is this a test?"

"A test of what?" Donghyuck murmured. "I'm just asking after your preferences."

Jeno bit his tongue until he could think a little more clearly. It was little use -- he could feel the heat rising in his face. Maybe he could blame it on the sun. "I prefer a sword to anything else, I guess."

"Fair," Donghyuck said again. "Swords, then. Maybe we can try something else next time. A knife, or a bow."

"You would shoot an arrow at me?" Jeno asked.

"Maybe hand to hand, as Jaemin asked," Donghyuck murmured. "Have you really not fought with him before?"

Jeno shook his head. "He has other options."

"I've never considered any of the others as an option," Donghyuck murmured.

Jeno glanced sideways at him. He was unsettled to find Donghyuck's eyes intent on his face. Unsettled, but pleased. "None?"

"None," Donghyuck said. "I haven't even spared them a look."

He knew the rush of surprise was clear on his face, in the lift of his brows, how he couldn't quite close his mouth again, tongue stuck somewhere behind his teeth on all the barbs of the reckless words he could say. Donghyuck waited. Jeno must have made a sight. As the seconds passed, Donghyuck's face grew more amused, his lips twisting into a failed suppression of his laugh. Jeno wished he wouldn't try to do that. He liked the sound. He wanted to hear it again.

"You confuse me, a little," Jeno said finally.

"Oh?"

Jeno nodded. "You have quite a way with words. I would believe it if you said you'd been trained to make speeches."

"Maybe I have," Donghyuck murmured. "But you don't do yourself justice, Jeno. I bet your mouth is just as capable as mine."

Jeno blinked away from him. He picked up a sword. "How do you want to call it?"

"First blood?"

Jeno swallowed hard. He shook his head. "Not on our first round."

"Of course," Donghyuck murmured. "I don't know your strength yet. Fine. Let's just try our best to knock each other to the ground."

✵✵✵✵✵✵✵

During his first lesson, a Twin had clapped Jeno on the back. “Don’t let the lordlings and ladies taunt you,” she’d said. “They’ve been trained to hold a sword since they left their mothers’ wombs.”

“Should I be happy about being beaten?” Jeno had asked.

“You have the upper hand, Jeno,” the Twin said. “All that training can make proud people sloppy. You have something they’ve forgotten.”

Jeno spit in the dirt. It was bloody. “I don’t have anything.”

“You’re hungry, Jeno. You have that.”

Donghyuck proved himself to be adept with a sword as well as everything else. But the Twin had been right. Jeno knew the aching hollowness in his gut more intimately than Donghyuck, whose skillful parries gave way to the beast in Jeno.

“Maybe next time,” Jeno said, offering him a hand. 

Donghyuck grinned, letting Jeno pull him up. Blood dripped in twin streams down his nose, wetting his lips. “Will you fight me again, Jeno?”

He hadn’t let go of Jeno’s hand. Jeno let the tip of his blade drag into the dirt of the sparring arena, meeting his eyes. It was sudden, the knowing, but he knew where he had seen them before. Donghyuck’s name, the one he had been born into, scraped over Jeno’s tongue, trying to escape.

Jeno swallowed it again. “Whenever you’d like.”

_ Your Highness.  _

✵✵✵✵✵✵✵

Jeno dipped his cupped hands into the bath, lifting them to pour the water down his chest. It stung, the soap running in rivulets over the wound on his ribs. Although Donghyuck had lost their fight, he was generous in his blows.

“Be sure to bandage that. Looks like it could get nasty if you leave it alone.”

Jeno huffed out a quiet laugh. He turned, facing Donghyuck. “If people keep sneaking up on me while I’m naked, I may start carrying a knife of my own.”

“Where would you put it?” Donghyuck asked.

Jeno tsked, “Maybe to your neck.”

Donghyuck laughed. He was still too far for Jeno to feel his breath, but he imagined it might be cool against his warmed skim. Donghyuck, whose gaze felt like an iron brand, seemed to be built on those kinds of contradictions.

Jeno resisted the urge to cover himself, aware of his nakedness as he’d been in the first few days. 

Donghyuck didn’t help, looking over Jeno’s torso as if he was as used to taking in the sights as he was to giving them. Jeno couldn’t blame him -- he had been distracted by Donghyuck fully clothed, he could let him look his fill a few seconds more.

“Are you hoping for another favor?” Jeno asked.

Donghyuck hummed quietly. “Are you offering one?” 

This was not what Jeno had in mind when he’d considered what it would take to get Donghyuck alone in some dark corner of Mortecole. But now that it was there, waiting for Jeno to reach for it, he found himself breathless, too stunned to take it. 

Donghyuck faltered, something crossing his expression that looked like doubt. He was too proud of that, though, wasn’t he?

“Donghyuck,” Jeno said, because it was all he could manage.

The hesitation was gone. Donghyuck waded closer to him. “Jeno.”

Jeno turned his face away before Donghyuck could touch him, his jaw clenched, working. He’d been right. Donghyuck’s breath was cool on the side of his face. Still, Jeno burned.

“Jeno,” Donghyuck said again, his voice low, the flicker of embers, the seabreeze at night, “you don’t have to sneak into my bed, you know.”

Jeno’s breath caught in his throat. He glanced sideways at him, found him smiling. “I--”

“It’s up to you,” Donghyuck said. He stepped away again, hauling himself out of the bath. 

Jeno watched him walk away, and everything was red -- the floors, the water, his hands. It was all red, all blood,  _ his blood, the mark, the mark.  _ It was up to him

But it wasn’t much of a choice at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *jeno climbs onto donghyuck's bed while he's sleeping with the intent to kill him, but doesn't.
> 
> with the style of author's notes of old...  
> me: now kiss.
> 
> [twt](https://twitter.com/jpseudy)  
> [cc](https://curiouscat.me/jpseudy)


	6. Chapter 6

There was a spot on the South wall that was almost never patrolled. It looked out over the sea – the cliff too high for a trebuchet to realistically aim toward. The wall’s only threat was its age, the ease with which someone might climb up – or down.

Most Mortecole students took advantage of the spot to escape from the four walls and spend the night together, hidden away with only the moon and the ocean to see them. There weren’t many other spots in the fortifications where one wouldn’t be spotted, either by other students with their wolfish grins or a Twin with a cool gaze. 

There were punishments for sneaking away. And Jeno knew intimately well how deep a punishment ran for one misstep in following direct orders. It was the one thing that kept him from proposing that he and Donghyuck slip away from prying eyes. Though his fear was pointless in front of Donghyuck. When Donghyuck caught him by the elbow before dinner, stopping him in the moving crowd of their peers, Jeno had no argument good enough to deny him.

"Do you have any plans tonight, Jeno?" Donghyuck asked.

A silly question -- the only plan he might have had was listening to Chenle bemoan their geography lessons, or finding new excuses to stay away from Jaemin. But Donghyuck wasn’t really asking what he was doing in his spare time. Donghyuck knew already that all of Jeno’s spare moments were devoted to him.

"What do you have in mind?" Jeno asked.

Donghyuck smiled, a reserved curve of his lips that bore no glimpse of the secret hiding behind them. "Meet me by the South wall?"

Jeno swallowed hard. He hoped it didn’t show on his face how the question made his heart skip. "Your bed isn't comfortable enough for you to sleep in?"

"It's hard to sleep with the lights on and everyone looking," Donghyuck answered.

He slipped away before Jeno could respond. There was no argument to be had. Donghyuck always knew when he'd won, even when Jeno was still catching up.

Chenle didn’t make it easy for Jeno to slip away unnoticed. He insisted on Jeno checking the bruise on his back from their rounds in the ring. 

"It's your fault I'm in pain," Chenle said, "and you won't even look? You don't care if I'm dying?"

Jeno rolled his eyes, shoved Chenle onto the edge of his bed and pushed his shirt up to see. The purple splotch spread over the dip at the bottom of his spine. It was ugly, but he would heal. "Maybe you shouldn't fall so easily next time."

"Maybe," Chenle said. "But I know you're not lecturing me on falling."

Jeno bit his tongue and sent him on his way back to Jaemin with a vague swat to the head.

The sun had already dipped beneath the waves when Jeno found Donghyuck on the wall, a shadowed figure only visible by the way his body blotted out the moon as Jeno looked up from below.

Donghyuck looked out at the ocean, its unknowable depths. The full moon illuminated his face. Jeno stood at the top of the stairwell, watching, noting the strong line of his nose, his full lips rosy even in the blue night.

“I see why we wear blue and black now,” Jeno said as he stepped closer, “you blend right in to the night.”

Donghyuck whipped around, eyes wide with surprise. “Gods, Jeno. I didn’t even hear you coming.”

Jeno could have made a teasing remark, one that nipped at Donghyuck’s ears and made his cheeks bloom red. But shamelessness didn’t suit him the same way it suited Donghyuck. Jeno would be the one receiving laughter by the end of their battle of wits. 

Instead, he smiled, leaning his elbows on the edge of the wall. “I’ve been well trained.”

Donghyuck didn’t respond, his gaze fixed on Jeno’s face. 

Jeno tilted his head to meet his eyes. Wind whipped at his hair, forcing him to squint against it to keep his eyes from watering, a battle between seeing all of Donghyuck and being able to see at all.

“You’re quiet,” Jeno said. “What is it?”

Donghyuck studied him for a moment longer before finding what satisfied him. “You don’t smile often. I’m always surprised when I get the chance to see it.”

As expected, Jeno was the first to flush pink. “Donghyuck,” he said, because he could and because he liked saying his name, over and over again, the taste sharp and sweet on his tongue. “You don’t need to worry about remembering it. I’m not sure I can help but smile when I’m with you.

Donghyuck laughed loud, the sound surely carrying with the wind, but Jeno couldn’t bring himself to care about getting caught here. They were hardly in a compromising position. And Jeno would have done anything to hear Donghyuck laugh like that, to see the grin that overtook his face.

Almost anything.

It was a shame that Donghyuck couldn’t smile so much while being kissed, but it was a sacrifice Jeno was willing to make.

✵✵✵✵✵✵✵

At first, Jeno had been too giddy to really kiss him. 

With their noses bumping together, Donghyuck’s fingers in his hair, Jeno’s hands on Donghyuck’s pleasantly small waist, something unexpectedly light filled Jeno’s chest. The first few times he dared let his lips brush over Donghyuck’s skin, he thought someone had slipped something into his food. What other explanation was there for his hazy surroundings, the easy draw of a smile across his face. 

“Stop laughing so I can kiss you,” Donghyuck muttered, holding Jeno’s face between his hands as he leaned back in. 

Jeno tried, honestly. But he couldn’t suppress the laugh that bubbled up his throat, spilling out onto Donghyuck’s soft lips. 

Donghyuck had given up, too, huffing indignantly before he licked Jeno’s chin in payback. Jeno was far past being disgusted by him. 

“What’s so funny?” Donghyuck asked. 

Everything. Jeno’s fingers drawing hot lines over Donghyuck’s back, the warm skin under his palms, Donghyuck’s breath in his throat -- his in Donghyuck’s lungs. He was unarmed, but under Donghyuck’s touch he felt like a bow string pulled taut, close to snapping. 

“Nothing,” Jeno murmured, clutching Donghyuck’s waist to pull him against his chest. “Nothing’s funny.”

Donghyuck hummed quietly, obviously disbelieving but prone to distraction this close, so close, close enough to-- 

Jeno sighed softly as they fit together again, Donghyuck finally successful in kissing him quiet.

It couldn’t last long. There weren’t many spots that made it easy to hide away. Approaching footsteps, raucous chatter, the whisper of a breeze around a Twin’s cloak as they swept down the hallway – there were so many things to pull them apart. The emptiness of Jeno’s hands once Donghyuck stepped away felt like the worst betrayal.

Maybe he should have been more focused. Maybe he should have concentrated on the game, the mark. The blood. But Jeno savored the warmth of Donghyuck’s skin over the heavy price hanging over his head.

✵✵✵✵✵✵✵

After lessons, when the study rooms cleared and Jeno was left with his books and a headache, he typically spent his time dozing with his head leaning in his hand. The sounds of turning pages and muted language practice drifted into a gentle buzz as his thoughts wandered away, out of Mortecole, Avimlore, and Yeolijn altogether. Back to the sand and the sea, hovering between the moon and its reflection on the waves.

That day, Jeno found his tutors more frustrating than usual.

“The Southern Sea Islands,” they said, “are a rapidly developing colony. Many noble families have winter homes there.”

The names of the islands, the patterns of ships in and out, the estate names of the aristocracy. Jeno bit his tongue as his ancestors dissolved in front of him, too miniscule in the grand scope of their mission to weather a passing mention.

He spent the afternoon with his hands in curled into fists under the table, ignoring the glances Chenle sent him from across the room. Jeno could have said something, could have admitted to the grit between his teeth and the saltwater roaring in his ears, could have handed Chenle some of his anger and let him do with it what he wanted, but it was hard to trust that he would understand.

One day, Jeno reasoned, even as his anger gnawed at his fraying logic, one day he could tear himself apart for Chenle. One day Jeno might believe that someone else would have the strength to piece him back together.

And, perhaps one day Jeno could acknowledge the bitter taste that flooded his mouth when Chenle spoke of his youth, the cushy childhood of a lord’s son – bastard or not.

He didn’t follow as his peers filed out of the room, instead lingering with the few others who needed a quiet place to think. As usual, the words on the page swam in front of him, his eyes burning with something like exhaustion, or frustration, or grief. He’d never had the privilege of knowing the difference.

Determined, Jeno pressed his fingers over his lips, staring down at the page as if by nature of his glare the words might give up their fight.

“Are you studying?”

If it were not for the boy’s accent, Jeno might have ignored entirely the shadow that fell over his table.

“Yes,” Jeno said.

“Good,” Jisung said, sliding the chair out across from him. “You can help me.”

“With your Aurelian?” Jeno asked.

If Jisung noticed his tone, he didn’t show it. His original lie, Jeno realized, was not something he was ashamed of, and how could he be? Killers couldn’t be weighed down by their dishonesty.

Jisung folded his hands together on the table. “You have something that I want.”

Jeno raised his brows. “I don’t have very much.”

Jisung rolled his eyes. Something about the movement amused Jeno – maybe it was a glimpse into the child inside Jisung, who had been hidden away once he stepped inside the gate. Maybe there was nothing young and innocent left in him. But it had been there once. It had been there inside all of them.

Jeno acquiesced. “What is it that you want?”

Jisung nodded, as if to say, _Finally, he’s being reasonable._ Then, aloud, he said, “Jaemin.”

Jeno sat back, crossing his arms over his chest. “Now you’re not making sense. I don’t have Jaemin.”

“You have control,” Jisung said.

Jeno blinked at him. “Have you been out in the sun too much today? Gotten into a bad fight recently? You should go get your head checked.”

“You’re a fool if you don’t recognize your own position,” Jisung said, looking more irritable the longer this drew on. Jeno shared the sentiment. “You’re at the center, they all revolve around you.”

Jeno pushed his chair back and stood. There might have been a time which he would have sat and listened to Jisung’s ramblings with some semblance of patience, but it wasn’t that afternoon. His head was already clouded.

Before he could leave, Jisung blocked the door and held his hand out between their chests. “You can pretend you don’t see it. That isn’t my problem. But if you’re going to have Donghyuck, have him, so Jaemin will walk away.”

Surely, that caught the attention of the other students who’d stayed back to study.

Jeno restrained himself from pushing Jisung aside and lowered his voice. “I don’t have Donghyuck. That is not—I don’t think you know what you’re talking about, _little vampire._ ”

Jisung’s smile was as sharp as his bite. “I thought you were smarter than this. I supposed you don’t know what you have after all.”

What Jeno had was a headache, and the growing urge to knock Jisung out the second story window. Instead, he pushed Jisung aside and let his feet lead him back to his dormitory, his mind too twisted to guide him.

✵✵✵✵✵✵✵

Jeno could lie to himself about many things. But he could not lie about the first time he saw Donghyuck's face.

It wasn't in the sparring arena of Mortecole. It was on the island, on a strange sunny day that melted the winter chill from his bones.

Jeno had sat on a pile of netting, the rope hard under him, as he watched the royal fleet unload from their voyage. His mother had been hired for the day to accompany the ladies from the ship to the estate at the top of the mountain. She was one of the only women worthy of such a position -- she was educated, of middling birth, and a dutiful temple goer. She went every week, climbing the mountain with a gift from the shores, bridging the gap between the gods and the people. Sometimes she brought Jeno along when she could sneak him out of the house. But most days his father insisted he stay and help on the farm, grumbling wicked curses under his breath as she left. Jeno often wondered, then, if the curses were meant for her journey or were uttered solely for his ears -- his father taking advantage of his mother's absence. Later, he wouldn't have to wonder.

Jeno had a temper, even then, but he was raised with manners. He knew to keep his hands off things that didn't belong to him. Although the royal servants shot ugly looks, he didn't take it to heart. He was just a little farmer boy with grubby hands and dirty feet.

The boy was bundled off the ship with a handful of grown people. It was a curious sight, this small boy walking surrounded by sharp swords and sweeping fans.

Jeno held his breath at all the glimmering treasures that passed by, but this boy was unaffected, his gaze flickering around the dock with more interest in the fishermen.

Jeno didn't see what the big deal was. He could name them all, the names of their children, the kinds of fish they caught, what price they brought at the market. He could tell the boy all those things if he wanted to know. If he asked.

He never did. His eyes -- big, golden like the eyes of all members of the royal bloodline -- swept over Jeno as if he wasn't there. And he was gone again, a prince carried to his palace and away from the village muck.

Jeno only dreamed of him for two nights, fascinated by the metal in his eyes. By the third, a night spent cradling his sprained wrist to his chest, lying still so he wouldn't split the stitches in his side, the eyes had disappeared from Jeno's dreams. And when he woke up, Jeno'd forgotten him entirely.

✵✵✵✵✵✵✵

He didn't speak of it.

Though Jeno could not parse the reasons, Donghyuck was not a prince anymore.

Some vicious part of Jeno might have been soothed by pointing it out, just to see the humiliation of a royal who had fallen from grace. But the vicious parts of Jeno tended to disappear when Donghyuck was close.

They'd snuck away again, crouched on the Southern wall with their backs against cool black stone. Facing each other, Jeno pressed his knees to Donghyuck's, running the tip of his finger down the back of Donghyuck's hand to the first knuckle of his middle finger, then back again, over and over until the places their skin touched went fuzzy with feeling.

Donghyuck watched him with eyes at half-mast, smiling. Jeno was content to be quiet. He didn't want to disturb whatever Donghyuck was thinking about. Besides, there were so few chances to just sit and breathe together.

"Let me ask you something," Donghyuck said.

Jeno hummed. "Anything."

Donghyuck's smile slanted impishly. Jeno gave too much slack -- he'd have to reel Donghyuck back in eventually, or he'd live to regret it. Hopefully, anyway.

"How old were you when you first fought?"

It wasn't a question he'd expected. Jeno mulled it over as he slipped his hand beneath Donghyuck's, pressing his fingers to Donghyuck's palm. "I was probably ten?"

"You don't remember it?"

"I remember the fight," Jeno murmured. "I just don't remember the date."

Donghyuck waited, which was prompting enough.

"Someone insulted my mother," Jeno said. "She'd only died a few months before."

Donghyuck gripped Jeno’s hand, his expression suddenly serious. “I hope you gave them hell for it.”

“Would I have given them anything less?”

Donghyuck’s tight grip remained. “I don’t doubt it. You seem protective.”

“I don’t like cowards. Only cowards insult someone’s mother, instead of something they can help,” Jeno murmured. Then he blinked. “Protective?”

“Don’t you think so?”

“No,” Jeno said. “But I don’t see many things the way you do.”

It wasn’t a joke. Donghyuck laughed anyway. He loosened his grasp only to slot their fingers together, holding Jeno’s hand over their knees. “I see how you look at everyone who comes close to Chenle. Like you might slice them in two.”

“I’m sure you would do the same for Renjun,” Jeno said. But he wasn’t. He hadn’t seen Donghyuck pay Renjun any more attention than he demanded. Most people had to demand Donghyuck’s attention or risk losing it forever. The thought spun in the back of Jeno’s mind, sinking in his stomach like a rock. What was it that Donghyuck saw in him that drew his eye? What would it be that finally drew it away again?

Donghyuck must have seen something in his face. He shifted over to sit beside Jeno, thumbing over the side of his hand. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” Jeno said. “Is it my turn to ask something?”

Donghyuck pressed his tongue to the inside of his cheek, tilting his head as if he had to ponder the question a while longer. Jeno jostled his side with an elbow. He succeeded first in nudging a breathy laugh out of him, before an answer. “Within reason.”

“Are you happy here?”

“Jeno,” Donghyuck murmured, “that’s the nicest thing you could’ve asked.”

Heat crept up Jeno’s neck. He elbowed Donghyuck again, relishing in the resulting laughter.

When Donghyuck calmed again his eyes glimmered like the stars above them. “I am happy. I used to think I wouldn’t know happiness – not with anyone else in my life. I could find it by myself, maybe. Alone.”

Jeno lifted his other hand, the one not tangled with Donghyuck’s, and touched his cheek. “I can’t imagine a life where you aren’t with people who care for you.”

Donghyuck tilted his face into Jeno’s touch. He lowered his gaze, quiet.

“Donghyuck,” Jeno said, “I know we aren’t supposed to promise, but—“

“Don’t,” Donghyuck said softly, his breath fanning over Jeno’s wrist. He swallowed hard, his voice tight as he said again, “Don’t…say things you don’t mean. That you can’t keep.”

“Then let me say,” Jeno whispered, “that I would promise you, if I could.”

Donghyuck huffed out another breath, a sound somewhere between a laugh and a cry. He circled his fingers around Jeno’s wrist, keeping his hand pressed to his cheek, as if Jeno would remove it, as if Jeno would ever voluntarily choose not to touch him.

“Don't you hate this, Jeno?” Donghyuck asked. His voice was as low as a whisper, so quiet the wind could have muted him if they weren’t so close, their heads bowed together like sinners in prayer. “Don’t you hate it here?”

Jeno blinked once, to clear the burn that started at the sound of Donghyuck’s misery. Then again, to assure himself that he was awake. “No.”

Donghyuck looked up at him again, searching his eyes. “No?”

Jeno shook his head. “It’s difficult. Training is difficult. And the rules. But it won’t be like this forever. We can—we’ll be able to make the world a better place.”

Donghyuck drew away.

Jeno’s hand, locked with his, would have fallen had Jeno not tightened his grip.

“You can’t really believe that,” Donghyuck said.

Jeno frowned. “If you don’t, what are you doing here?”

Donghyuck’s laughter this time was cruel. He rubbed his hand over his face and Jeno wished it would wipe that expression away, that look that told Jeno he was a fool for believing that Justice was something true. Something he could have.

“I didn’t come here by choice,” Donghyuck said coolly. “No one has. No one receives the invitation and denies it, not if they want to survive.”

“I chose.”

Donghyuck tore his hand away and left Jeno grasping at cold air and emptiness. “This is a prison, like any other.”

His words fell over Jeno like stones. It was a terrible realization, then, that Donghyuck had not left the prince behind. The prince had been forced into Donghyuck’s body and left to rot.

But Jeno had never had the throne as an option. “I suppose that depends how much freedom you had before.”

The sound of the wind filled the silence as it wrapped around them. Even with Donghyuck’s arm pressed to Jeno’s, their reluctance to part, the night felt hollow. The moon a crevice of light in the sky, darkness fell of them. Jeno feared he could not shake its claws.

✵✵✵✵✵✵✵

When they collided it wasn't in the dark of night or in an empty hall.

There was no chill zipping up Jeno's spine or ominous sign in his breakfast dish. Despite this, he would later think he could have seen it coming, had it not been for the glaring distraction standing in front of him in the form of a boy with gentle hands and a glaring smile.

It was that boy he was watching when it happened.

Donghyuck had a way with a bow and arrow. Content to take a break from his training with Chenle, Jeno leaned back against the fence of the sparring arena and rubbed his dusty palms together as he watched Donghyuck focus on the target, several meters away.

Donghyuck didn't get distracted quite so easily. He stayed still after letting the arrow fly, gaze on the invisible trail through the sky. Only when the tip of the arrow hit the target, the perfect center of the inner ring, would he relax and smile.

Donghyuck had a lot of smiles, but this was one of Jeno's favorites -- small, smug, the subtle twist of his lips that you had to look for to witness because it would be gone again in a flash. But it always came back. It was his victory smile. Donghyuck was more often victorious than not.

The only smile Jeno liked better was the one Donghyuck pressed against his skin when Jeno's hands found purchase on Donghyuck under his tightly laced clothes.

And it was the smile, the few seconds it graced Donghyuck's lips before he drew another arrow from the quiver, that stole Jeno's attention. It was the smile that almost cost him his life.

Jeno felt a hand on his back first, and then he was falling.

He shot his arm out to brace his fall, the shock of his elbow meeting the ground shuddering through his body.

Jeno blinked dust out of his eyes. He tried to sit up and stand despite the sudden impact. It took several seconds for him to realize he was bleeding, to feel the place where the knife slid across the side of his neck.

"Jeno!" someone shouted. He couldn't place their voice, his ears ringing, and besides that, his main concern was the person barreling into him, the blades gripped in each of their hands.

On instinct, Jeno grabbed Renjun's wrist, jerking his hand back before he could gut Jeno.

Unswayed, Renjun swiped at Jeno's chest with his free arm, driving Jeno back. 

"Jeno!" someone shouted again, closer this time.

Jeno couldn't spare them a glance. He ducked as Renjun swiped his knife at his neck again. Renjun was too fast.

Jeno wasn't prepared for this, half his mind still lost in the shadows, in the sunlight. The blade nicked his arm this time. His blood splattered across the dirt.

Jeno wasn't fast but he made up for it in strength and weight. This time when he hit the ground, he dragged Renjun with him. He gripped him tightly as they rolled, metal glinting in the afternoon sun, to leverage himself on top of Renjun.

"You're a fool," Jeno spat, bracing his arm against Renjun's chest. He didn't remember the last time Renjun had gotten a good slash in, but his vision in one eye was suddenly blurry with sweat, tinged pink from blood. 

Renjun was small, but Jeno would have been underestimating his strength to go easy on him. When he squirmed one arm out from Jeno's grasp, Jeno lifted both their bodies. He slammed Renjun back into the dirt and let his head smack against the ground. 

He'd known already that he couldn't kill Renjun, that there was more at stake than The Wolf's cruel play for their loyalty, but it wasn't until he had Renjun's throat under his hand that he realized he couldn't hurt him either, that there was someone more important than this moment who wouldn't forgive him for his own conditions of justice, no matter how fair. 

Jeno grit his teeth, resisting the urge to squeeze Renjun's windpipe. 

Underneath him, Renjun's eyes were cold. He had gone still, considering Jeno's face. Jeno didn't know what he saw exactly, but he knew when Renjun found the crack in his armor that told of his weakness.

Vulnerability was not what you wanted to bring to a knife fight. It was a pity that Jeno's weakness was what had brought them here to begin with -- his soft spot for Jaemin, his unconditional tie to Chenle, his eyes on Donghyuck while Renjun's lingered on them both, watching, noticing.

Renjun noticed everything. Yet just as Jeno hadn’t notice the knife flashing below, neither of them noticed Donghyuck until his hand was between them, gripping the blade centimeters from Jeno's throat.

Blood dripped onto Renjun’s chin.

When Jeno dared to look away from the boy under him, he met Donghyuck’s gaze.

“Get up,” Donghyuck said.

Jeno got to his feet, slow. With Renjun, there was no telling how fast he might strike once Jeno had lifted his weight off him and given him a chance to breathe.

But Renjun stayed still, lying on his back with Donghyuck’s blood sliding down his neck.

“I’ll take him.”

Jeno’s attention jerked toward the voice.

Jaemin stood a few yards away, separated from the small audience that had gathered. His stance was casual, as though he’d been there the whole time, watching. His eyes slid over Jeno as he took in the scene, not even meeting his gaze, and landed on the blade – still gripped on one end by Renjun, the other by Donghyuck. “You should go to the infirmary.”

If he heard him, Donghyuck didn’t acknowledge it. He stared at Jeno, his face shuttered.

“Donghyuck,” Jeno said, quiet. He hadn’t said more than his name – didn’t know what else to say – but something about Donghyuck’s name on his tongue was meant to be quiet, kept between the two of them, safe from the crowd. “Let’s go.”

There – a flicker of something across Donghyuck’s face – then gone.

Renjun’s fingers slid from the knife. His hand fell to his throat, holding it as though he were bleeding himself.

In a moment, Jaemin crossed to them. Donghyuck gave him the knife.

✵✵✵✵✵✵✵

The infirmary was a familiar place but often had no one watching it. They had learned to care for themselves in the early days. Taught only once which salves were best for which hurt, how to bandage a wound, and many of Jeno’s acquaintances struggled in the weeks to follow.

Jeno had years of experience in the necessity of careful cleaning and care. If he hadn’t taught himself, he wouldn’t have lived long enough to receive his invitation.

"You're bleeding," Jeno said.

Donghyuck's expression betrayed nothing. The indifference in his eyes hurt worse than the blows Jeno suffered himself.

Jeno reached for his arm.

Donghyuck stepped aside, turning to face the clean white bandages. He still held his hand to his chest, his palm pressed over his heart as if the proximity to such a fiercely beating thing might close the wound itself. But he was just a human boy and he needed care that he couldn't give himself.

Jeno bit his tongue as he approached him again. He was resolute in not sparing Donghyuck's face a second glance. Stubbornness to match Donghyuck's attitude was reason enough to avoid his gaze. The lingering fear of what he might see there if he looked again only further fuel to the fire stoking in Jeno's gut. 

"Sit," Jeno directed.

Despite Donghyuck's mood, he listened. He sat on the edge of the infirmary cot, where Jeno had sat hundreds of times before at this point in his training, as they all had. 

"Are we learning to fight or learning to be beaten?" Jeno mused aloud as he opened a few jars of ointment, sniffing them until he found the right salve.

Either Donghyuck hadn't heard him or he didn't care to grace such useless questions with anything like an answer.

It further stung in Jeno's open wounds that Donghyuck wasn't willing to bridge this divide with his humor, one of the only things he had allowed Jeno of himself that the others didn't see. 

"Are you angrier that Renjun tried to kill me or that I couldn't defend myself well enough without you?" Jeno asked as he reached for Donghyuck's hand.

Donghyuck stared at him for a long moment.

Jeno waited, his palm outstretched, until Donghyuck laid his own over it.

His voice wavered as he said, "Don't ask such stupid questions."

The cut was terrible to look at directly. The skin on his palm bloomed out like a bloody flower, the gash buried deep in his hand. It was lucky that he hadn't lost control of it completely.

Though he pursed his lips in pain, Donghyuck still opened and closed his fist when Jeno asked, wiggled each finger until he was satisfied with the degree of motion.

Had it been foolish of him to ask where Donghyuck's upset lie? Of all the things Jeno was uncertain about, Donghyuck's feelings had not been one of them.

Sitting across from him in this silence, the touches they'd shared felt like scorching brands across his skin, the words whispered against his skin sounded to his fleeting memory like prayers sent up to the heavens and ignored -- like lies. 

Jeno cleaned his hand carefully, dabbing at the torn edges of his skin with a rag before spreading the salve over the wound.

"You're bleeding, too," Donghyuck said finally, as Jeno wrapped his hand in a bandage. Already the stark whiteness had soaked up his blood, staining the center of his palm. 

Jeno paused, glancing up at him, before finishing his work, tucking the end of the cloth into the loop around his wrist. "Not anymore. I think I finished bleeding."

"Then you have bled," Donghyuck said. He exhaled slowly. Something about it sounded like an admission, though Jeno couldn't parse the meaning.

Although they had tested his use of them, Donghyuck's hands still trembled as he raised them to frame Jeno's face. Jeno waited as Donghyuck inspected his face, his fingers tracing over his temples, the curve of his jaw. 

"It would have been a waste of such a nice day if you'd gotten your throat cut and bled out at my feet," Donghyuck said.

Jeno lifted his brows. "Would it have wasted your fine luck with the bow?"

"Oh, you were paying attention?" Donghyuck murmured. "It was not luck."

"Sorry," Jeno said. "Of course it was skill alone."

"Thank you," Donghyuck said. For a moment, it looked like he might smile, but the tremor across the line of his mouth was accompanied only by wet eyes, a tear rolling down the bridge of his nose as he tilted his face away. He held Jeno's face, yet he wouldn't allow Jeno the same courtesy.

"It's not fair," Jeno said.

"Nothing is fair," Donghyuck whispered, "I thought you would have learned this by now. How could the world be fair for people like us?"

"People like us?" Jeno repeated.

He laid his hands over Donghyuck's, a poor imitation of the way Donghyuck liked to hold his hand under the table during their studies, whenever the tutors were distracted with the awful way Jisung pronounced Yeol colloquialisms.

But it would be a long time before he could press their palms together like he used to, before Donghyuck was healed enough that it wouldn't smear blood over both their hands. "A farmer boy and a prince?"

Donghyuck startled, jerking his hands away. It felt like a slap to Jeno's face, it looked like one to Donghyuck's. "Killers, Jeno," he spat. "That's what we are."

"That's not all that you are," Jeno said.

"It is," Donghyuck snapped, his eyes flashing -- through the veneer, the disguise he had made for himself or Mortecole had made for him, Jeno could see the gold, could see his ancestors' gift, the sign of his royal blood that wasn't as evident in the way he actually bled -- like any man, like Jeno.

"That's all you and I are now," Donghyuck continued, "maybe you've forgotten that we can't be anything else, but I haven't. I know what I am."

A heart, beating double-time under Jeno's hands. A mouth, warm and lovely. A man who could shoot an arrow true. A boy like the sun.

"I know who I am, too," Jeno said. "And I'm not anything less than I was before."

"You're a tool for The Wolf," Donghyuck hissed out, and that was the serpent in him now, showing Jeno his ugly fangs, as if Jeno hadn't already known they were there, hadn't felt them with his tongue all those nights he spent tucked into Donghyuck's mouth. 

Jeno closed his mouth. Donghyuck, for all the gentle parts he’d shown Jeno, would not be reasoned with. And Jeno had spent too long trying to convince himself that he could have this – that he could have a boy he couldn’t even hold onto.

He had tried to be better, but Jeno was just the boy with the sun in his eyes.

He could see now. He had unfinished business.

✵✵✵✵✵✵✵

Two steps outside the infirmary, Chenle intercepted him.

Jeno shrugged and swatted off his hands where they grabbed him, checking for his hidden injuries. “I have to go meet someone.”

“ _Meet someone_ ,” Chenle spat out, grabbing a handful of Jeno’s shirt to hold him in place. “What the hell happened?”

“I’ll tell you later,” Jeno said. He tried to be patient, to be gentle. Chenle didn’t deserve his misplaced anger – this was for _him_ anyway. He pushed him aside, continuing down the hall.

Chenle was not lost so easily. He kept easy pace with Jeno, matching his strides. “Who the fuck do you have to meet after you’ve apparently been nearly slaughtered in the yard?”

“Slaughtered would be an exaggeration,” Jeno huffed. “Who told you that?”

“No one,” Chenle said, meaning _Jaemin_ , but Jaemin hadn’t even been there until the end. Nor had he – where had he gone?

Jeno’s feet faltered just once. He did not let them miss another step. “No one.”

“The little vampire,” Chenle said, dismissing the question. “What was it about? Did you know Renjun was after you? You’re supposed to _tell me_ things like that.”

“Why should I have to tell you?” Jeno asked. “You’re supposed to be right beside me.”

Chenle stopped halfway down the hall. Jeno did not wait for him. Neither of them had much to say.

✵✵✵✵✵✵✵

The Wolf’s rooms seemed far less foreboding in the light of day. What had looked like spilled blood to Jeno’s eyes was nothing more than a rug, the crackling fire was low, the haunting shadows conquered by the sun.

The Wolf was still a beast, dominating the room. The Twins who had let Jeno in remained on the other side of the door, their eyes downcast even as they opened it. Jeno wondered if they saw the knife twirling between The Wolf’s fingers, recognized the glint of the metal and the light, delicate handle the way Jeno did.

It was the knife that had been pressed to his throat not long before – he would have been a much worse assassin if his gaze wasn’t immediately drawn to the blade.

The Wolf did not move from his seat. The spin of the knife never slowed. “What a surprise to see you, Jeno.”

Jeno swallowed hard. He stepped up to the table, hardly breathing in his proximity. He fisted his hand around the cloth drew it from his pocket.

The Wolf’s eyes fell to the rag that had been used to sop up Donghyuck’s blood as Jeno laid it on the table.

“His blood,” Jeno said.

Perhaps it was interest that lifted The Wolf’s gaze again. Perhaps it was disappointment. Jeno didn’t have the opportunity to parse the difference.

“You may go, Jeno,” The Wolf said.

The hall wasn’t as empty as Jeno’d left it. Chenle leaned against the wall across from the door. Beside him, Jaemin was whispering something into his ear. They were closest to Jeno, much closer than the boy staring out the window, yet it was him that noticed Jeno first.

For a few seconds, nothing else mattered but Donghyuck. Despite the others around them, Jeno wanted to go to him. To follow the thread stretched between them. To hold his face between his hands and ask if he would pray for him, if he would give Jeno the same faith he held for the gods.

To cross this distance, Jeno needed to be brave.

And he wasn’t.

“What’s going on?” Jeno asked.

Finally, Chenle and Jaemin noticed him, drawing apart.

Donghyuck turned back to the window, pursing his lips as he watched whatever inconsequential thing was happening in the courtyard.

“We were called by The Wolf,” Jaemin answered, glancing toward Donghyuck. The other boy did not respond, to confirm or deny it. Truth, then.

“What are you—“ Chenle stopped.

When Jeno looked at him, it was clear he was as surprised to see Jeno there as Jeno was to see him. So he’d come for Jaemin.

Jeno bit his tongue until he felt something other than the bitter ache rising in his chest.

The door behind him opened again. The Twins who guarded the room spoke together. “Jaemin. Donghyuck.”

As the door closed behind them, the hall fell to heavy silence.

Chenle broke it first. “Jeno. You’re…”

This time, Jeno stayed still as Chenle came close. It was all he could do to breathe. One breath in, another out.

Chenle cupped the side of his neck with his palm. He was usually in such good humor. What was it that stole his smile from him now? Was it Jeno? Did he matter enough to take something like that?

Chenle’s face was serious as he brought his other hand to Jeno’s cheek, brushing his thumb under his eyes. It was only when they came away wet that Jeno realized how his eyes stung, his chest burned, that he’d stopped breathing.

“Jeno,” Chenle whispered.

Maybe one day Jeno would be strong enough. Brave enough. Smart enough not to depend on someone who might walk away. He leaned into Chenle’s touch, his body suddenly too heavy to carry alone. Chenle slipped his arm around his waist, holding him up.

“It’s over now,” Jeno mumbled into Chenle’s shoulder as he gripped his arms tight, sucking in fast breaths. “It’s over. I did it.”

“It’s over,” Chenle repeated, his voice tinged with confusion. And Jeno would explain it to him – he would – but he had to know.

“Why did The Wolf need to see them?”

Chenle’s fingers stuttered over the back of Jeno’s neck, where he stroked his skin in slow, soothing circles. He began again in a moment, as careless in his public affection as Jeno was in everything else. “Donghyuck needs a new sparring partner. They said Renjun’s unsuitable.”

“And he needs to see The Wolf for a sparring partner?” Jeno asked.

He knew the answer before Chenle whispered it into his hair. Knew it in the way his heart skipped, the way he knew the taste of the ocean and the heat of Donghyuck’s hands.

“He’s trained long enough, hasn’t he? He needs a Twin.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3
> 
> [twt](https://twitter.com/jpseudy)   
>  [cc](https://curiouscat.me/jpseudy)


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, about the blood and violence tag... please be aware of it

Night became day. The moon bulged, thinned, grew wide again. The dirt of the sparring arena darkened with rain and made it impossible not to slip in the mud, making fighting an effort in not spearing yourself through on your own sword. And Jeno waited for a word that wouldn’t come. 

“Another village burned today, in the North.” Chenle paused as he loaded Jeno’s plate with hot food. 

Jeno sat back in his chair, watching him with a vague sense of amusement, and wondered where Chenle had learned to be doting. Between his horse riding lessons as a child? Or was it in the dark corners of the dorms, whispering into the ear of an Aurelian boy? 

Once Chenle was satisfied, he passed Jeno’s dish back to him and returned his attention to his own dinner. 

“Near the capital?” Jeno asked. 

Chenle shook his head. “Closer to Aurelos. They say it’s bandits, but there have been too many attacks. Any efficient lord would have put an end to it already if it were just bandits.”

He picked at his food, glancing across the table as though by compulsion. But he wasn’t looking at Jeno. The seat at Jeno’s side remained empty. 

“Your village?” Jeno asked. 

Chenle’s smile was as empty as it was wide. “Not my village.”

Not his, or not his to claim any longer? Jeno sighed. “I’m sure it won’t last long. Maybe the King will start utilizing the army, pull them out from the docks.”

“What king? What army?” Chenle muttered. “All they’re good for are terrorizing honorable people.”

“I suppose who’s honorable depends where you’re standing.”

“Where are you standing?”

Jeno offered him a wry smile. “Inside some very tall walls.”

Chenle tapped his knife against his chin. His eyes wandered behind Jeno, his forehead creasing as he thought. “Would you go home, if you could?” 

“This is my home,” Jeno answered, though he meant _wherever you are_. 

The islands held pieces of him, but only the parts he didn’t want back. Like his father, his hard fists, his eyes blown wide as Jeno took the moonlight into his bones and the house shook around him. 

Jeno would never go back to that place again. He’d never know when his father died. 

But in his dreams, he’d kill him a thousand times over. 

✵✵✵✵✵✵✵

Jeno lifted himself from the bath, dripping water across the already puddled floor to his fresh clothes, folded neatly at the end of the room. Night robes were a little looser than their daily wear, and the fabric shifted black and blue in the light. There were no laces to tighten. The flow of the sleeves around his wrists made him feel more exposed than he was standing naked. Luckily, most of the time he spent in these robes was spent dreaming.

He slipped his shirt over his head without waiting for his chest to dry and the cool, thin cloth stuck to his skin. Pushing his arms through the sleeves, he felt a misplaced wad of fabric between his knuckles, as though someone had balled up a long strip and tucked it into his elbow for safekeeping. He paused only long enough to pinch it between his first and second fingers, maintaining a neutral expression. Everything at Mortecole was purposeful. Whoever had slipped this into his clothes had meant for him to find it, and were not interested in letting other people see.

Chenle appeared at his right side, his hair still dripping onto his shoulders as he clutched his night robes in hand. He twisted his torso around and tucked his chin against his shoulder, showing Jeno the back of his left bicep, where Jisung had gotten a good bite in that afternoon. The wound wasn't deep, but it was messy. "I think I'm going to scar. Someone should tell him to learn how to use an actual weapon."

"At least he won't get nervous when he's disarmed," Jeno said, rolling the wad of fabric into his palm and closing his fingers into a fist. If he'd been able to lace his sleeves, he could have kept the cloth hidden against his wrist. Instead, he just had to hope that Chenle would not notice his tension. "You could learn a thing or two."

"Anyone would get nervous if they had a hulking monster like you bearing down on them with a broadsword."

Jeno heard himself chuckle. "One day you'll learn how to best me."

"Maybe someone your size," Chenle said, "but you? I haven't gotten the best of you since our first day."

"Please. You win all the time."

"But I've never bested you." Chenle, dressed, shot him a grin and clapped him on the back. "Come on, Jeno. Is tonight the night you'll make up with our Jaemin?"

Jeno followed him from the steamy room into the wall. The cool air bit at his nose and ears, drying out the last of the humidity that clung to him. "I have no desire to dream about serpents tonight."

"Why have nightmares about snakes when you can befriend one?" Chenle paused, glancing sideways at Jeno. 

Jeno steadied his composure. Though he was distracted by the secret tucked into his palm, he would not be so easily swayed by Chenle's charms. He was only asking. If he were to beg, then that would be a different, much more pitiful matter that Jeno might not be able to refuse. But Chenle would not beg. No, Chenle did not win through sympathy, but through sharp jabs to the gut.

"You know that he misses you," Chenle said.

"I suspected he might say so."

"He does miss you," Chenle argued, "and I know that you miss him."

Jeno smiled indulgently. "You believe that you know many things, but I think you may be surprised."

"I couldn't be surprised by you." Chenle touched his knuckles to the back of Jeno's hand, a fleeting touch as they passed the doors to the courtyard. "I know you down to your bones, Jeno."

Jeno let the words settle like a fire in his chest. They would not burn him up, but they would warm him for the rest of the night, close enough to the vow they might take in a year -- a few months if they were lucky. 

_I am your sword and your bones. You are my blade and blood._

Jeno stopped. “Do you have any secrets, Chenle?” 

Chenle, already a few paces ahead, halted. “Don’t you?”

Jeno held out his hand, spread his fingers. In his palm, the wad of fabric unfurled -- a bandage, splotched with rusty brown, old blood. 

“Gods,” Chenle swore, “what is that?”

Jeno rubbed his thumb over the frayed edge of the bandage. His stomach rolled with hot sparks he couldn’t interpret. “It’s an invitation.”

✵✵✵✵✵✵✵

_Careful,_ Chenle had urged him. _Don’t stand too close to the edge._

As though Jeno had not stepped off the cliff face the moment he took Donghyuck into his arms.

The moon usually lit the path to the South wall. A few students milled around the courtyard after dark, still cleaning blades, sharpening swords, and refilling quivers. Where the dirt was dark with drops of blood, they dug their toes into the ground and buried it, planting violent seeds. The moon was one arced sliver in the sky, its blue glow blotted behind misty clouds. Long shadows swallowed Jeno and let him slip past his straggling peers unnoticed. 

As he expected, Donghyuck was waiting at the top of the wall, leaning against one of the turrets, his head tipped back against the dark stone. Jeno stood at the top of the stairs and watched him, as he had weeks ago, as he wished to do always. Wishes were for other people, people not made for ruin. Jeno, at his birth, had been named for destruction, his path rubbed over his newborn eyes with thumbs like stars. Nothing had changed for him. 

He unwound the bandage from his fingers as he crossed the wall, then wound it again, crossing the layers of stiff, dried blood over and under his knuckles. He didn't want Donghyuck to notice him. His nerves strung around his chest in a tight noose, each step closer to Donghyuck accompanied by a jerking urge to run backward. Until the last moment, a pace away, Jeno mused over disappearing. Until then, he did not want to be seen, and so he wasn't.

Donghyuck's gaze was on the horizon, though it was an invisible line between the deep indigo sky and black ocean. Still, he kept his face tilted toward the sea, looking. The curve of his neck was covered by the high collar of a black coat. It swallowed his figure and allowed him to melt into the dark stones of Mortecole. His face kept him visible -- the liquid of his eyes glinting with starlight.

Jeno swallowed hard and stepped out of the darkness. 

Donghyuck jerked upright, startled. He blinked at Jeno for a moment, lips parting, but he said nothing. He straightened his shoulders and lifted his chin. "You got my message."

Jeno raised his hand between them, letting the bandage flutter in the wind like a parade flag. 

Donghyuck nodded, his expression grim. "And you still came."

"It was a difficult message to decipher," Jeno said. "I'm still not sure how I should interpret it."

Donghyuck shrugged one shoulder, looked away, back again, away. His eyes kept traveling to the invisible ocean. "I know."

"Know what?"

"Everything."

Jeno smiled and dropped his hand, wrapping the bandage around his wrist. "I doubt it. I don't doubt that you want to, though. There's just too much to know."

"Jeno," Donghyuck murmurs. "Please."

"What is it that you think you know?" Jeno asked. 

"I know that you were supposed to kill me. You needed to kill me, so Renjun wouldn't kill Chenle, and that's why you got close to me." Donghyuck stops, sucking in a deep breath. "I know that."

Jeno tried to speak. He opened his mouth, moved his tongue. Only strangled laughter escaped, clawing out of his chest like some poor, desperate beast. He turned away and pressed his fist to his mouth.

"Jeno," Donghyuck said. "Did you really--"

"Yes," Jeno said bitterly. "Yes, I wanted to kill you. In order to kill you, I had to hold you, and kiss you, and make you promises. Donghyuck. You're not a fool. For someone who has had so much royal tutoring, I thought you might be a little smarter."

Donghyuck grabbed his arm, tugging him back around to face him. His grip on Jeno's bicep was hard, painful, his fingers digging into flesh as though to tear it apart, rather than to cherish it. "I could kill you right now, Jeno. If you breathe another word about who I used to be, I will."

Jeno clenched his jaw. He curled his fingers over Donghyuck's wrist. "You won't. You know that I never had to get close to you. If I wanted you dead, you would already be rotting."

"Then I suppose we both believe that we know things that aren't true," Donghyuck whispered. His words were nearly lost to the wind, but Donghyuck's words were always precious to Jeno's ears. No matter how cutting, Jeno would catch and hold them.

"I don't want to argue with you," Donghyuck murmurs. "That's not why I brought you here."

Jeno released Donghyuck's wrist. Donghyuck's grip on Jeno's arm only loosened. 

"Why?" Jeno searched his face. The corners of Donghyuck's lips twitched downward. He looked away again, over the wall, to the sea. Jeno studied the smooth line of his jaw to his neck and saw, for the first time, the pin nestled at the base of his throat, holding his coat closed. The Twins, standing together at the center of the pin, stared back at him.

Jeno looked up into Donghyuck's eyes again, looking for a different answer. There was none to be found. "You're leaving?"

Donghyuck cupped the back of Jeno's neck, his touch gentle. "I wanted to say goodbye."

Jeno closed his eyes and stepped back into the shadows that shouldn’t have existed on top of the wall, where the moon touched everything. Donghyuck’s voice reached for him, but he could not stay.

Neither of them had the choice.

✵✵✵✵✵✵✵

Jeno crawled into his bed with vision blurred. His hands shook, so he pressed them together between his knees. He stared at the ceiling. It was blank and dark and there were no stars to shape and imagine a path to the future.

Across the room, Chenle sat on Jaemin's bed, his legs folded underneath him as he flipped through the pages of a book, killing time. 

Jeno's throat felt sore. It was an ache that traveled up behind his nose and eyes and made it hard to swallow. He wanted to tell Chenle that Jaemin was not coming back, that his belongings would live there only for another night before they disappeared, and maybe he should take something to keep, something to hold onto. Under his callous veneer, Chenle was the sentimental type. He could have taken Jaemin's fan, kept it in his trunk beside the carved wooden image of a god he didn’t worship.

The bandage wrapped around Jeno's wrist was sand on his skin. Bile bubbled in his throat. He swallowed and swallowed and wondered when his body would stop trying to turn itself inside out for a man who never intended to stay.

He hoped that it was a trick of the night, another bad dream, and that by morning Donghyuck would rise from his bed and live alongside him again. 

He hoped so hard, he almost prayed. 

He didn’t know when he fell asleep. The last thing he saw before the waves crashed over his head and dragged him down into the inky depths, was Chenle on the wrong bed, his hands pillowed under his cheek, waiting.

✵✵✵✵✵✵✵

Entering Mortecole was an affair. There was some ceremony involved, at least, in the first visit to the baths. Cleansing their bodies of their old lives, Jeno and his peers rose from the baths as new people, ready to follow The Wolf. 

Jeno didn’t know if there was such a ceremony involved on the way out. Leaving was done quietly -- whether you were alive or not required no separate measures. You were there, in your midnight blue, and then you were not. The line between killers and ghosts thinned.

When Jeno rose, Jaemin and Donghyuck had become ghosts. Chenle stared at him, knowing. Jeno looked away.

On his first day, Jeno had aimed to throw away his memories and step into his new life. Now, he was not sure there was ever such a thing as being clean. 

Every day, regardless of other schedules and exercises, they sparred in the inner courtyard. 

Before the bell was rung, Jeno cut out of breakfast, and stole through the long hallways, across the dusty courtyard, into the first building, and out again. He stood in front of the iron gates. 

If Donghyuck had left some sign for him, Jeno had to witness it.

The courtyard was clear. Through the gates, the street bustled with people. A girl called out to the owner of the noodle shop and she responded in light and laughter. A merchant dropped a coin into a beggar’s palm and walked on feeling proud. 

The ground in between Jeno and the iron gate was undisturbed. No one had come this way or-- or, if they had, the evidence had been cleared. 

Maybe he was too late. 

Behind him, a door opened. Boots crunched through the soft dirt. Jeno didn’t have to turn to recognize the footsteps.

Chenle’s hand came to rest on the back of Jeno’s neck. 

Stiffening, Jeno grit his teeth. It was not fair. None of it was fair – not the kick in his chest as he stared at the iron gates nor the curl of his fist as Chenle touched him. 

It wasn’t his fault. Logically, Jeno knew that, in this, the path of their lives, Chenle was faultless. Still, Jeno’s blood thrummed with the desire to hit something. And Chenle was the closest target.

As if he could read Jeno’s mind through touch alone, Chenle’s grip tightened. He shook Jeno gently. “Let’s go.”

✵✵✵✵✵✵✵

They chose each other. Jeno chose the swords. He let Chenle decide which he liked best, and took the heaviest for himself. It was hard to wield, but one blow could do enough damage. Enough to lop off a limb. Or a head. 

With the sun climbing higher, beating down on the crown of his head, Jeno thought he might like to cut clean through something. 

Chenle didn’t tease him. Jeno had taken for granted his ability to take one glance at him and understand. Standing in front of Jeno, arcing the sword through the air, his eyes shut Jeno out -- a door against a storm, an iron gate. 

Jeno blocked Chenle’s first blow and saw gold. The second clash of blades rang of laughter in the wind. His third parry ripped the sword from Chenle’s grasp. It clattered to the ground and Jeno kicked it away. His sword, too, he tossed aside. He took a deep breath, his blood sparking with heat. Lightning rattled through his chest. He needed to strike something, to drive a blade through someone, feel hot blood run over his hands, bend until broken. 

He needed to run.

Chenle surged forward, tackling Jeno around the waist, and they toppled to the ground. Jeno hit the ground hard, his vision going black for a few seconds. It was then that Chenle hit him first, a punch that cracked off his jaw -- his bones or Chenle’s, he didn’t know. There was only red and the moon and the salt-spray on his face as he drove his fists into Chenle’s stomach, ribs, his face -- and Jeno was on top of him, holding him there as he beat him, and Chenle was lying there, his fingers loosely curled into Jeno’s clothes, holding him there as he was beaten.

_I am your sword and your bones._

_You are my blade and my blood._

_His blood, the knife, Chenle._

Jeno sagged on top of Chenle, gasping for air. Chenle was sobbing. Everything tasted of metal. Jeno spat in the dirt and sucked in another heaving breath. And -- no, it was his own sobs that he heard. 

He clutched at Chenle’s shoulders, one trembling hand patting gently over his dark hair that was now caked with blood.

Chenle coughed up a laugh. 

“Why?” Jeno whispered, his lips smacking of sweat and dust. “Why did you let me--”

Chenle gripped his arms. He smiled and it was awful, his eyes wet and shaking. A tear ran down his cheek and fell over his mouth. “Who else? Would you have stopped...for anyone else?”

Jeno fisted his hands into Chenle’s shirt again, pressing his forehead into his shoulder. “You… I never want to hurt you. I never want to--”

“I know,” Chenle said. “I know. But I wanted to hurt.”

And Jeno had wanted to hurt someone. 

He wished it helped, wished he could stop thinking about that mouth, those hands, his eyes. 

✵✵✵✵✵✵✵

Chenle slept. 

Jeno threatened another student until they gave up the bed beside Jeno’s, and he pulled it close and watched the rise and fall of Chenle’s chest. 

_He’ll be fine,_ a Twin had said, supervising Jeno as he brought Chenle to the infirmary. _Things like this happen._

Chenle slept.

Jeno watched until his eyes grew too heavy, and then he dreamed.

Jeno was lying on the beach. The sand shifted under him, his head pillowed by the dunes.

He heard her. "Jeno," she said. Her voice was a birdsong, a flute, it flew through the salty ocean air and buried in his ears, in the sand beside his head.

He opened his eyes, saw all the stars, the sky empty -- missing something.

"He's coming," she said. "He's here."

"Who?" Jeno asked. His voice sounded thin, passing through the wind. 

He sat up, shaking loose the fingers of sand curled into his hair. The beach was empty, dim.

No reflection on the black water. One step off the shore and he knew he'd drop into the deep chasm of the ocean, swallowed by the hungry water nymphs.

"Mother? Is that you?” 

There was no answer, just the sound of her humming as if whispering a lullaby just over his shoulder.

"You could have stayed," he said, though he knew it wasn't true.

What place was there in the world for a woman who had known the touch of a god, whose mind ran on empty catechisms?

Footsteps. Jeno turned. In place of his mother stood a figure shrouded in stars. They covered his eyes with their fingertips, pressed gently, and everything went blue. Water bubbled from Jeno’s throat, pouring from his lips and dribbling down his chin. He choked, spluttering, trying to cough it out. The figure cupped his cheeks, pressed a soft kiss to each fluttering eyelid, and gave Jeno up to the bottomless sea.

✵✵✵✵✵✵✵

A dream or a vision? Shadows of the deep night or moonlight on his face? Consciousness found hands pressing heavily on his chest as if to squeeze the air from his lungs. 

Jeno didn’t have much left to fear. His tongue was stiff with brine, his knuckles split and aching. He cupped Renjun’s elbows and met his gaze with sleep blurred vision. “I wish it was you.”

Hovering over him, straddling Jeno’s waist, Renjun shifted lower. 

Attempting to read his expression would have left Jeno disappointed, so he didn’t try. No surprise would be found in the void of his gaze, no amusement or teasing was left to wring from the twist of his lips. Renjun’s face remained blank as he studied Jeno’s face instead. He'd seen that there was something left to be found in Jeno, though Jeno himself couldn’t feel it.

“I wish it was you who had left with him,” Jeno continued, his voice all grit, as though he had sand stuck in his throat he couldn’t cough up. “If it was you, I’d know he’s safe.”

Renjun slid his hands up Jeno’s chest and tapped his fingers against his throat. “He doesn’t need protecting.”

Jeno resisted the urge to shake him. He allowed himself only to squeeze Renjun’s arms, digging his fingers into his flesh as though he were gripping Renjun’s neck and not the other way around. “Then why did you try to kill me? Why did you kill that other boy?”

Renjun smiled and Jeno saw the hole inside him, the hollow space that had been carved from all the soft things he might have been born with, and he wondered who had done that, who had torn Renjun apart. 

“I didn’t kill him,” Renjun said. “He killed himself by trying to put his hands on me. Just how you killed yourself by putting your hands on Donghyuck.”

Jeno swallowed. 

Renjun’s eyes followed the motion, his thumb pausing its rhythm on Jeno’s skin to hover over the swell of his Adam’s apple.

Jeno whispered, “Who will be doing the killing now? For you putting your hands on me?”

They met with open mouths. Renjun tasted like wanting. Under his tongue, Jeno’s desires burned and turned to ash. 

Renjun’s grip on Jeno’s neck tightened -- not like a man seeking vengeance, but a man drowning, a man clinging to any sign of life. Jeno’s pulse could not have been a delicate flutter under his hands, but the pounding of a drum, the first sound of war. Jeno clutched at Renjun’s arms until he pulled away.

“Fool,” Renjun said as he wiped Jeno’s wet cheeks. He meant it. But meaning didn’t stop him from fitting his body against Jeno’s side, his jagged hands careful on Jeno’s face. 

Beside them, Chenle breathed steadily.

Renjun pet his hands over Jeno’s hair as he would a wild animal. “Fool,” he said, again, and again, wiping Jeno’s tears until they stopped. 

Lying beside the man who had tried to cut him open, Jeno gave himself over to sleep.

He did not dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahem... thank you for reading <3
> 
> you can find me here:  
> [twt](https://twitter.com/jpseudy)  
> [cc](https://curiouscat.me/jpseudy)


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